I have 12 villagers and the garden with a scarecrow and plenty of farmers but the food is barely keeping up with demand. What gives?

thats odd..what is your dificulty level?

Easy, level 2 farming, with coconuts, garden, dam, scarecrow, but no fish (of course).

The censored word was dam but I spelled it like a cuss word, sorry.

hmm, im not sure why your food is disappearing. sorry

i've never had that happen

That is odd. With only 12 villagers even one farmer should be able to keep up without any problem. What speed setting are you using? Is your farmer or farmers perhaps ignoring the crops and harvesting just the coconuts? Not only does it take longer for the farmer to deliver each nut, it's worth less food points than the crops.

A further thought: did this happen while your game was off? Your farmer/s may have fallen ill and were healed by a doctor only after some time had gone by, so they were unable to work. If you've not turned off the game in the interval, your log text might confirm this, or give some other clues. See the sticky thread about the log files here.

I agree with the poster that if your villagers are harvesting only coconuts, then your food supply won't stay up. I have been lucky that one of my villagers hates coconuts and stays only in the crops. But the other two are obsessed with getting the nuts off the trees and I have to micro manage them allowing only one to harvest the nuts at a time. This way I can get rid of the coconuts once and for all and still keep my food supply adaquate.

I think I have figured this one out for myself--I read somewhere that 15 is the most people sustainable at level 2 farming. That means at 12 I am getting close to the limit which would explain why they eat almost all their food with each cycle and spend most of their time worrying about food. I am almost at 90000 tech points and hope to solve this problem with level 3 farming. Frankly Im tired of worrying about food and ready to move on to playing this game and sovling puzzles, etc. Thanks anyway.

Also, I think (IM JUST GUESSING) if you time travel, then it messes up the crops and how fast they come back up.

It can also mess with other programs on your computer and do major damage.