FarmingInTFT

These rules are intended to allow GM's and players figure out the amount of food an area of land can produce, the number of people who can be supported by it and calculate what the cash income of the land will be. It is based on research on Medieval and Renaissance farming in Europe.

The basic unit of food is the 'koku'. This is enough food to feed one person for one year. It costs about $100.

Farm land is measured in 'ares' (no standard symbol) which is a space 10 by 10 meters. 100 ares is a hectare (or ha). 100 hectares is a square kilometer (or km^2).

Now a hex 1 km across is 12.5% smaller than one square km. Therefore a hex 5km across is about 22km^2 (25km^2 * 0.875 = 21.875km^2) & a hex 30 km across would be about 788km^2 (30km * 30km * 0.875 = 787.5km^2).

Standard Medieval farming practices required 2 to 2.5 ha to produce an 'extra' koku. (By extra I mean surplus food in addition to the food necessary feed the peasants working the land.) Renaissance farming required 1.25 to 1.5 ha per extra koku. Taking the inverse gives us the surplus kokus per hectare:

To approximate the number of peasants that are working the land assumes that there is one koku per hectare. Anything not surplus is eaten by those actually working the land. So long as you are working with cereals and not rice, this approximation is pretty good.

Obviously a small increase in the productivity of the land makes a vast difference in the civilization's final population density.

(The orient had a far higher population density; assume 3 peaseants / ha with rice and intensive aquaculture / manuring fields, etc.)

Land is usually used for 2 years, and then it is left fallow for a year. Thus one third of the land will normally be out of production. In regions with a shortage of land, intensive organized fertilization of farm land may allow the land to be used constantly. Poorer quality land may be left fallow for longer periods, just lower the percentage of land being worked.

So normally, an area will have 66% of the farm land in production in any given year.

Land is rated by its quality. This gives a multiplier that normally reduces the number of koku produced. (Pick a row which represents your land quality and multiply the number of your potential koku by a number from the second column.)

Note that it is rare for a of a square km to be the same land quality. Obviously the GM will have to give an average quality.

If your peasantry has been dying you will be able to farm the best land. This will raise the average land quality in a hex, but will directly cut into the area farmed. Make sure that the cut is sufficient to lower the total koku collected.

Subsistance farms can be ignored, unless you wish to know your number of peasants.

Very Poor Quality is not normally farmed, tho it may be used for herding. Careful husbandry of the land will cause yields slightly below that of the normal multiplier for the soil quality, (the land requires more workers which all eat). However careful husbandry for a period of a century or more may improve the land's quality. Of course abuse of the land can reduce the soils productivity. Abused land that is allowed to go wild, may regain some or all of its lost productivity.

Food storage organization may reduce further the spoilage. Normal spoilage is included with the base technology of the land production, but unusually good or bad organization for food storage may adjust the food gained. Spoilage may adjust harvests from +10% to –100% of the food harvested.

Lastly there is the percentage of the extra koku grown that is taxed. In most medieval societies this is theoretically 100% but in such cases your peasants (slaves) are not inspired to work very hard which reduces productivity. Your tax collectors also must be fed and armed so this will automatically reduce the take. The tax collectors would include the overseers on the farms. Tax collectors may include your men at arms. Thru-out most of history, peasants were slaves, or near slaves, and treated very brutally.

More liberal taxation increases productivity but reduces your share. If you have free men owning the land, then they may care for the land well enough to slowly increase the soil's quality.

Taxes may be set arbitrarily low of course. Note that most of the food will be sold in your own hex. Since there isn't enough money locally, you would normally get services from your people instead. These services would include troop levies.

Farming was unpredictable. You should throw regular problems at anyone who's income depends on the verities of insects, disease & weather.

The GM should set a value for how well the season goes. This is a multiplier that typically ranges from *1.5 to *0.0. (With most values falling from 110% to 70%.)

Example:

You are a Baron with one hex of land. The hexes are 20 km across so you possess 350km^2 or 35,000ha. Now the technology is very early medieval so it takes 2.85ha to produce 1 extra koku (0.35 Koku / ha). Your land is largely (68%) swamp and brush, then there is 14% of your land with subsistence farms (they produce NO surplus) which you ignore. The remaining 18% of your land averages low quality (a *0.62 multiplier). The stupid peasants have been abusing the soil and so in succeeding years you can expect the land quality to slowly drop. The food storage organization (due to your intensive efforts the last 10 years) is now normal for your technology. Slightly over one third of the land is fallow (64.2% is not fallow). Your peasants are treated brutally, with most surplus taken, but the high percentage of wild land complicates taxation (too many places for peasants to hide food), so your taxes are 53% of total food produced. There was no disaster (the year's bad insects & good weather have cancelled out).

The total Koku surplus that you gain from your land this year is:

35,000ha * 0.35 koku/ha * 0.18 * 0.62 * 1 * 0.642 * 0.53 * 1 = 465 koku.

If you could sell your surplus ( ha, ha !) you could expect an income of about $ 46,500 / year. (Assuming you, your servants and your men at arms ate none of it.)

The most important thing to remember is that nobles are powerful, but cash poor. In the example above, we said that your baron would have an income of $46,500 if he could sell all of his food. But who can he sell it to? Every one would have a grain surplus at the same time he does. Also, there is no global economy. Shipping the food is very difficult – it must be sold locally. (Tho see gates below.)

Historically, a great deal of a Noble's status was placed on two things: the size of the retinue that a noble was able to support (far more of the near slave servants & the higher status servanters were kept than was actually necessary to run a castle), and on the feasts and entertainments provided. Both of these could be provided with small cash expenditures.

What was done was vast numbers of people would become hangers on, living for room & board, and perhaps a pittance of a wage.

Skilled labor could demand more, but whenever possible this would be perks in status and power over their own servants, rather than cash.

Wizards could be offered security, board, and supplies of anything that could be locally manufactured or collected. A lord might promise to send out adventurers to find some obscure ingredient or risk losing his local wizard. Wizards are special cases, being so rare and powerful that they should demand significant monetary payments from any lord they choose to live near.

At an absolute maximum, 1% of a nobles koku income could be converted to cash / week. This sort of fire sale emergency would of course not get the best prices. It would require a vast amount of careful work and supervision to accumulate this sum. If the work is delegated to underlings, they will siphon off some into their own pockets, have to be paid, or most likely both.

More usually the total conversion of koku to cash would be about 10% for the whole year. This could be done by encouraging skilled labor to work in this peaceful area of low food costs, develop a town, and tax the trade for cash.

Creating a town is very profitable, far more so than a strictly agricultural fief would be. Some lords built complete mini cities, only to be unable to get guilds and people to move into them.

With gates to allow emergency movements of bulk goods, prices will tend to be more stable than historically, which will put more pressure on small merchants. Gates make trade much easier and therefore more profitable. If a lord has wizards enough to allow him to trade with distant markets, then 20 to 25% of a lord's koku income may easily be converted to cash each year.

In my campaign I have put a maximum range of 100km on gates with both ends on the same world. (Gates to other worlds have other problems). If no limits are placed on gates, the structure of the entire economy will depend how common are wizards that can use this spell, and whether some group has made a monopoly or syndicate to control them (this would be incredibly profitable so there would be strong tendencies for people to do so).

One idea I strongly encourage is instead of the monolithic 'Wizard's Guild' talked about in TFT, the GM introduces a peck of 'Wizard Schools' that actively hate and compete against each other. Thus the poor nobles have some chance of playing the wizards off against each other.

Land that is too poor to support farms may be herded. Herds of cattle, sheep, etc. can eat grasses and other stuff humans can not, and then be slaughtered. In rich land, they could remain in one place, however on marginal land they must be moved from area to area. Only 10% of the energy the herd animals eat turns into food energy that can be gained by eating them. If the animals are on very rich land, pretty much 10% of the energy can be gained this way. However, if the herds are on more marginal land, food energy will be spent driving the animals to new pastures and feeding the shepherds who move them.

Herding also reduces the number of peasants. Scottish lords drove off their peasants and replaced them with sheep farms. Far fewer men were needed to shepherd the sheep than to grow food and the lord's profits soared. However, when they needed military levies, they were shocked to learn that they no longer had enough peasants to raise troops.

To run herds on land, look at the soil / land quality table above. Pick a value for the land (which will be low, if the land is low quality). However, the value for the land will be higher than the value of the land for farming. (This is because the animals eat grass and scrub which humans can not subsist on. The GM should pick a multiplier – typical values are from *0.25 to *0.15.) To reiterate, high quality land will use the farming values. However, range land which is unsuitable for farming, gains this higher value.

Multiply the koku generated by 10%. This is the number of koku of meat that can be harvested from it by herding. (Eating meat is 10% efficient.) The peasants needed to herd animals is 1/8 that needed to farm the land, if you need to know your number of peasants.

Where as it is hard to convert plant food to money, it is easier to do so for meat. Each year, typically 35% of the value of a meat koku can be converted to cash. Also it is hard for a tax man to keep an eye on all this grain and veggies. Watching animals is relatively easy. The peasantry will find it harder to cheat on taxes with herds.

Example:

A lord has some wild land that is very poor quality and subsistence. It ranges from *0.02 to *0.10 quality multipliers. The average for 12,000 ha of this land is a *0.045 multiplier – barely worth farming. The GM gives a typical herding value of a *0.20 multiplier. The technology level (for agriculture) is Early Medieval and the GM has said that this lord is getting 0.25 koku / ha for his farms. He decides to convert this land to herding. Brutally evicting the small holders off the land, he moves in sheep and cattle. (The calculations below ignore the tax rate.)

0.25 koku / ha * 12,000 ha * 0.20 (herding land quality) * 0.1 (herding cost) = 60 koku of meat.

This is not much food, but there is a saving grace... Meat is the food of the wealthy and it is easier to convert to cash. 35% of these koku can be converted per year to cash money. So at $100 / koku, a lord can convert that 60 koku of meat into:

60 koku (meat) * $100 / koku * 0.35 (conversion factor for meat) = $2,100

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This is a very nice profit off of land that was very marginal. Everyone is happy – except for the peasants that were evicted from land, which their families had worked for 7 generations.

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In contrast, if the lord farmed that land, we would have...

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0.25 koku / ha * 12,000 ha * 0.045 = 135 koku of grain & vegetables.

135 koku (grain) * $100 / koku * 0.1 (the normal conversion factor for grains) = $1,350

Note that the technology level may be different for farming and herding. A culture might have an Iron Age level of farming technology (say 0.2 koku / ha), but a Medieval level of herding technology (say a 0.4 koku / ha (before the 1/10 multiplier)). Obviously such a culture will have a much higher mix of animals in their diet than a more normal culture where the two values are close together.

In addition to meat, heard animals can also provide labor and other things. Sheep give wool, llama can act as pack animals, cows give milk (if the human's have the enzyme to digest it, not all human cultures have this gene), etc. These rules do not cover this extra income.

Unless the GM wishes to research this themselves, they may say that extra value created by herd animals will double the income of their land devoted to them. So in the example above, the lord would get $4,200 / year from his 12,000 hectares by selling wool, cheese and hides as well as meat. (The actual value would be more, but we are not paying workmen to sheer the sheep's wool, tan the hides, make the cheese, etc.)

NOTES:

In TFT, you can buy 'Iron Rations', suitable for taking on a trip which cost $2 / day, about the same as food at a restaurant. Staple food would be no more than 1/5 of that value, and standard peasant food would be about 2/3 that.

365.25 days / year * $2/day / 5 * 2/3 = $97.4 / year. (Absolute minimum cost of 1 year's food.)

However, even peasants would like a bit of meat in their diet so we will round up to $100 / year. Adventurers would likely spend $200+ / year on food as they would want a high protean diet to help build muscle and repair wounds. If they are usually on the road and eating a inns and restaurants, they could easily spend $500+ / year on food.

The number of people on oriental farms using rice is a guess. Based on the population data I could find, I gave the orient a value of 3 koku / ha. If anyone knows the exact values, please let me know.

Farming Technology..... TABLE ONE
Tech Period	Koku Produced / hectar
---------------------------------	---------------------------------
Early Agriculture	up to 0.1 koku / ha
Bronze Age	up to 0.2
Iron Age	0.2 to 0.3
Early Medieval	0.3 to 0.4
Medieval	0.4 to 0.5
Late Medieval	0.5 to 0.6
Early Renaissance	0.6 to 0.7
Renaissance	0.7 to 0.8
Late Renaissance	0.8 to 0.9
Widespread Farm Magic	1.0 to 1.5 (For GM's that want HIGH population densities.)

Soil / Land Quality........... TABLE TWO
Land Quality	Production Multiplier
---------------------------------	---------------------------------
Extraordinary Quality	* 1.15 to 1.2 times
Excellent Quality	* 1.11 to 1.14
Good Quality	* 1.01 to 1.1
Normal Quality	* 0.91 to 1.0
Low Quality	* 0.61 to 0.9
Poor Quality	* 0.31 to 0.6
Very Poor Quality	* 0.01 to 0.3
Unfarmable & Subsistance	* 0.0

Common Taxation Policies........... TABLE THREE
Tax Description	Tax Multiplier
---------------------------------	---------------------------------
Peasants treated very brutally, all surplus taken	* 0.65
Peasants treated brutally, all or most surplus taken	* 0.60
Peaseants treated poorly, most surplus taken	* 0.55
Peasants treated well, most surplus taken	* 0.45
A few free men, high taxes	* 0.40
Some free men, fairly high taxes	* 0.35
Many free men, medium high taxes	* 0.30

Farming in TFT

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