Characters need to eat to remain healthy. Characters that do not eat will eventually lose all but their last healthpoint, making them a sitting duck to any hostile creatures or players that may encounter them. Food can be gathered from a few edible plants, all of which helpfully appear in starting locations for new players.
All farmable plants drop seeds when they are harvested. Foods which use seeds as ingredients need to be carefully managed to ensure you never run out of seeds - using two stockpiles, one small one for planting seeds and an overflow stockpile for cookable seeds, should negate this risk.
Any wild edible plants you encounter can be tended and harvested, and will regrow over time if nothing is built on top of them.
Press
gand selectplough fieldsto select fields to plough. You must have a plough to be able to do this
A source of fresh water is required to make farm plots - usually this will be a river. The size of the river will affect the amount of squares away from a river you can make a farm plot. A river which is one tile wide can only support farm plots immediately adjacent to it. A river two tiles wide can support two lines of farm plots on either bank, and so on.
You will need to make a plough to farm fields. Ploughs are quite heavy so it can be beneficial to store it in a stockpile close to your fields, and to have your farmers drop it after they've used it.
Press
gand selectplant seedsto select fields to plant. You must have a seeds to be able to do this
Seeds can only be planted on unimproved farm plots. Gathering brush or fruit and vegetables from edible plants will yield seeds.
Press
gand selecttend plantsto select plants to tend. You must have a seeds to be able to do this
You will need a hoe to tend plants. You can see how close a plant is to being ripe by looking at it with l.
Press
gand selectfruit & vegetablesto harvest plants for fruit and vegetables. Only fully tended plants will be harvested with this order. They will also drop seeds.
Press
gand selectbrushto harvest plants for brush. Only fully tended plants will be harvested with this order. They will also drop seeds.
Food is made in a kitchen. It is automatically eaten if it's moved to a stockpile by all characters on the screen who have access to the stockpile and have the eat automated order turned on.
Each step of the farming process can be made to recur daily. It can be a good idea to set up some characters as farmers who go through each step of these orders every day for a set area.