When farming, it's clear that having more farmers helps when you have crops: they can all harvest crops.

It's not clear to me if having more than one farmer is valuable when I'm planting and watering. Does it speed the process up?

From what I've read on the forum, having villagers plant or water does nothing for the time it takes to grow crops -- if you are babysitting your village, then it doesn't hurt to change all your farmers to another task for a bit.

If you are turning off the game, though, you should keep a couple set to farm so they can harvest the crops while you are away -- your villagers won't spontaneously harvest until the bin is really low, and by then it's too late to build back the stocks by themselves.

-- jen