I had a bit of a problem figuring out how to keep my wee peeps alive .... but I figured out how to grow my population without them starving. Run the game at 1/2 speed... have your designated farmer forage just enough berries to get trainee status... then change its skill to research and set him/her making tech points. If you go for farming tech first you can harvest crops. While you're waitng for tech and the hut to be built...constantly and I mean constantly scan the village for mushrooms. You get 8 food for the brown capped mushrooms and 45 food for the ones with the pinky orange tops. Only forage for berries if your food drops below 100. Put the game on pause when you do not have the time to constantly look for mushrooms. If you do this you can support a population of 15 villager fairly easily. Once you have the ability to harvest crops you can switch to normal speed, (but switch back to 1/2 speed when u are harvesting.... the villagers eat less often and you can get a bit of a stockpile going.) You can support about 25-30 peeps this way. I got a little cocky and grew my population to 50 before i got fishing... needless to say I had to restart lol. I hope this helps