Tropicology: Farming

[Senor Ruina]

Having watched people for a while, I am pretty convinced that the food loads:meals ratio is 1:30.  That is, 1/30 of a load of corn is 1 meal.  And it is the same for all food on Tropico.

(If you have data that contravenes that, I would love to hear it.)

Anyway, given that conversion, it is possible to start work on evaluating farming.  What are the most productive farms?  What are the plusses and minuses of each kind of farm?

Obviously this is a hard thing to evaluate, because ground conditions and weather conditions vary.  It is hard to control a test.  But here is a first set of data collected.  I made an island with three flat terraces.  I put in two farms of each type except sugar, with an extra three corn farms to make sure there was a food farm near to everything.  (There was no decent ground for sugar on my map.)  Then I ran the game for about 30 years.  The farm wage was held constant at $12.

All of the permanent crops started to produce about 1955.  

The labor hours spent on the farms were nearly the game for all farms.  Each farm ended up in the range of $18300-$18900, with the mean about 18700.  I could transcribe all that, but I think I will just treat them as all the same.

Here are the totals exported, from the almanac:

banana: 216928
coffee: 415480
papaya: 213546
corn: 117016
tobacco: 119040
pineapple: 85239

Meals were taken from all the food farms:

banana: 138, 228
papaya: 390, 198
corn: 370, 807, 1618, 1021
pineapple: 234, 305

[Senor Ruina]

So, let me compute total loads output from each farm type.  That's the export totals divided by the price/load, plus 1/30th of the total meals provided.

banana: 271.16 + 12.2 = 283.36
coffee: 319.6 + 0 = 319.6
papaya: 355.91 + 19.6 = 375.51
corn: 292.54 + 127.2 = 419.74 (4 farms)
tobacco: 119.04 + 0 = 119.04
pineapple: 94.71 + 17.97 = 112.68

The inputs here were all about the same: around 18700 per farm, or 1560 farmer-months.  So productivity ranged from a high of .12 loads/farmer-month (papayas), down to a low of .036 loads/farmer-month.  In terms of loads/year from a fully staffed farm, those would be 5.76 down to 1.73 loads/year.

Note that the permanent crops were all much more productive than the non-permanent crops.  I quit in ~1984, that is 34 years.  Of those, most of the first five years were spent waiting for permanent crops to grow.  So the productivity of these crops (once they get going) is actually underrated in the overall numbers; it should be about 17% higher than stated above.  

Once they got going, the papaya groves were cranking out on the order of 6.7 loads/year.  !

Even counting the initial growth time, the least productive permanent crop (bananas) still outproduced in loads the most productive nonpermanent (corn), by 35%.  The bananas did take up a lot more room, though.  (All of the perm crops took up a lot of room because I let them fully plant them out.)  In terms of dollar value, obviously the permanent crops easily beat all the non permanent ones.

But consider this.  Since food is load based, this means that in the long run, permanent crops may be better for producing food.  (This is not totally clear because in my test I gave the perm crops all the space they would take, which is less than corn farms take.  But I think it will prove out.)

Consider the profit potential for exports of bananas.  Sure, you can't use a factory to improve their price.  That's a big downside.  But they got $216K even without a factory!  From 8 farmers!  Consider the pineapples also grown, and assume they all went to a cannery - even then their value would be increased by only $600; that is, the total value of the exports would have been $142K!  The tobacco, if all going to a factory, would have more value than the bananas - $381K.  But it does require a lot more overhead to get.  

(Of course, the coffee, all going to a cannery, would be fabulously profitable.  Do it if you can!  Can it if you do!)

[Senor Ruina]

An experiment on farm size.  

I created a large, perfectly flat mesa.  This was a very nice place for coffee, by design.  I then used the editor to make most of it beach, so that no crops could grow.  Small patches were sprayed green, and a farm placed in each patch.  I then ran for ~35 years, with a constant wage of 9 for all uneducated workers.

Here's the data on the farms.  The area is the number of grid squares of terrain they had their trees on.  All paid out roughly $15000 in salary.

#  Area  Income
1  3  13271
2  6  42809
3  9  60580
4 12 83291
5 12 92079
6 17 96135
7 19 99476
8 27 160615
9 30 187330
10 30 188136
11 41 222436

Now, I have read elsewhere that perm farms need only 16 squares.  That's obviously not true, at least for coffee farms on nice mesas.  My average production was $6050 per square.  That was in roughly 35 years.

[Senor Ruina]

Four more larger coffee farms.  About the same setup as before.  

1 36 155272
2 43 266838
3 57 244803
4 64 258386

The "right" size for these farms seems to be maybe 40-50.

[El_Coronel]

Your math is off, Kid.  I still have the farm footprint you mention, it's 5 out from the farm on all sides but the rear.

That's 13x9 + 2x7 (corner-clipping) - 2x3 (barn size).

That's 125 total squares.

That's a bit more than the above tested size.

7x7 after deducting the barn space is about optimal at 43.


Good info, Senor Ruina.

[Brf]

Yup.... I was going to quote this thread, but the forum database was reeeeeeeaaaaalllllly doggy this morning.

[Egg]

Does Tropico follow real life weather systems? Meaning that in december to january it would rain more compared to the hot seasons like april to june?

If it does, then is it feasable to do crop rotation on the farms? What are the implications on this?

[Privateer0]

This is interesting. So, permanent crops take a while to establish, require more land, but in return produce higher yeilds per farm(farmer).

Extrapolating this trend further, it's a fair hypothesis that ranches, which take even longer to establish and use up even more land, would provide an even greater yeild per farmer than the permanent crops. Has anyone done any experiemnts with this, or has any personal experience to share?

[Brf]

Ranches can produce right away...

I dont like ranches though.... last time I used ranches, my Tropicans were eating 2.5 meals per day (rather than the normal 1.5) and still skipping meals and complaining they were hungry.

[Bulletsponge]

I dont like ranches though.... last time I used ranches, my Tropicans were eating 2.5 meals per day (rather than the normal 1.5) and still skipping meals and complaining they were hungry.

all that red meat turns them into americans  

[Privateer0]

Ranches can produce right away...

Technically, yes they can. But their production seems to be based on the size of the herd. So, since they only start off with two animals, it takes a couple of years to build it up to full capacity.

I dont like ranches though.... last time I used ranches, my Tropicans were eating 2.5 meals per day (rather than the normal 1.5) and still skipping meals and complaining they were hungry.

That's interesting. I never noticed that. Just making sure, you didn't happen to have "food for the people" issued when you checked that, did you? My people's food consumption is usually at 3.5-4.5 with the mentioned edict, ranches or not. Come to think of it, the only time I see 1.5 or thereabouts is in the beginning of the game where everyone chows on corn. I guess you can't eat too much of it even if you try.

This leads to another hypothesis. Perhaps feeding different and better kinds of food to your citizens raises the amount of food consumed?

[Brf]

No. I didnt have Food for the People on... and they were eating almost nothing but beef. In most games, I have noticed they eat between 1.5-1.8 meals per day... With that all-beef game they were eating around 2.5 per day and skipping 0.8 per day... I think beef is just bugged.... That might be the origin of the "Your people are starving" message that players complain about with the beef scenerios too.

[el fabio]

Well, about rains.
I live in Brazil, so I know very well the weather system of south america.

Our summer goes from december to march and our winters are from june to september. The rainy months are: january, july and august. Sometimes, february.

So Tropico is just like in real life - you must remember that Tropico gives no exact geographic location for the island, but we can guess that it's in the Caribbean.

Trinidad y Tobago has a weather system very close to our brazilian one. I never went to Trinidad, but in Amazon, every day is a rainy day. (this must be the reason why people call it a "rain forest").

[Phil Walker]

Jus' browsing the forums and noticed this mention of average meals eaten per Tropican higher when running a cattle-based agricultural sector.  I may just have the answer here.

http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=8011.msg186912#msg186912

Apparently, cattle meals are counted into your avg. meals eaten statistics but the number of cattle isn't.  Hence, a higher-than-expected number of meals eaten.

[Coconut Kid]

noticed this mention of average meals eaten per Tropican higher when running a cattle-based agricultural sector.  I may just have the answer here.
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=8011.msg186912#msg186912
Apparently, cattle meals are counted into your avg. meals eaten statistics but the number of cattle isn't. Hence, a higher-than-expected number of meals eaten.

Updated link:
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=8011.msg186912#msg186912

Yes, there is a major bug in the game; cows and goats are included with people in the food\meals statistics and the hunger alarm. (Cows eat 19 times per year, versus the 1.5 times a person eats ; times = meals. Grass just doesn't grow that fast within the invisible fence.)

I don't know what mistake I made in computing the size of the planting area of a farm ; it is five tiles from the footprint of the building.

The level of rainfall is determined from the "Vegetation" slider in the map initial setup. It is parallel to the amount of vegetation, duh!


Re Egg's question in reply #6: The bands of rainfall move east to west across the map and generally shift fast enough not to coincide with the crop growth & harvest cycles. Therefore, rotation is not practical - even with intensive micro-management.