We are working to improve the game's AI for the upcoming update.

I had this problem too, and this won't solve the problem but I found the revitilising stew helped.

It is a pain but I'd just heal everyone (if they got sick because they were starving) then make the stew. It just means you are less likely to lose people because they are starving as the stew completely fills up their health bar. In the meantime, I'd have as many on tech as possible and not worry to much about what they farmed.
In effect it was: as many people on tech as possible while people starved. Come back, heal and serve stew. Repeat until food problem solved.

Like I said, I can't solve the problem but this did help in the meantime for me.

PM me if you want to know what the stew is or you can find it on posts.

Hi LadyEmz, thanks for your help. I can't believe how devastated I was when I found out two of the children died! LOL, afterall it is just a game. Anyway, I ended up starting over again and this time I put my energy first into getting the crops going then switched all adults (I only have 9 people and two are children) into tech except for one adult. I haven't yet started the game this morning, so I'm crossing my fingers that they will still be alive. Oh yea, I also put the game on 1/2 time overnight. So we'll see.

This is almost exactly my situation except I have 22 people now, 3 Master Farmers, 7 children, and the rest Tech and 1 builder. I went to bed with 2800+ food to wake up to less then 1400 food and them merrily watering the crops again! Ocean is still not over fished! It's not fished at all unless I MAKE them do it! I have noticed now they will start watering the crops while I still have 2-4 coconuts left on the trees.

What sense does it make to have them Watering Crops with bowls of water in an irrigated field when there's an ocean with fish in it to harvest? I need to start building my population and I don't dare with this situation going on.

Grrr, My game's on pause until I get an update that fixes this mess or they're all gonna die while I'm not looking. I cannot spend 12 hours a day making sure they have enough food to last through the night!

Well, my daughter inadvertently solved my food glitch! She was playing around with Elder Tamil's preferences and changed him from Researching to Parenting and guess what happened? Yep! Every single adult woman is now caring for babies!

In desperation I threw everyone left into the ocean to get fish so they all wouldn't starve and there comes the algae! Good thing I'm only 10k short on tech points for Farming 3.

I have everyone now working on tech points until the crops come in. Shouldn't take that long, then I can finally progress.

(RE:LadyCFII)

I can't wait 'cuz the only time my game isn't paused is when I'm playing it. After leaving it go for about 6 hours on half speed my food depleted way too fast and my 2 farmers were slacking by the pond and everyone else was working away right where I left them.

I know that since the game is already out it is probably too late for this. But my thoughts would be since the field is irrigated that they would not perform the Watering action at all. Instead, I would prefer them to do something like Weeding the Crops.
Also, it would be nice if working the cropland would give a benefit in addition to increasing skill. For example, after a certain number of succesful actions on the field, the crop timer decreases a set time. (Sample: weed the field successfully 3 times by a master farmer, time to next harvest decreases by 1 minute.)

you're all so lucky to still have food left to brew stews or keep them alive for some time.

i have algea, ran out of coconut, some wind that makes them slower, crows on the field all the time, 35000 tech only (so there's still another 55000 to go to solve the algea problem with slower villagers) another 102 min to go on the field and NO food left at all - and this situation started already 30 min ago when I was still down to 28k tech and the coconuts still haven't replenished - I'm going nuts here swooping around looking for mushrooms - just have a couple of min to relax now a red one popped up!

Have you completed the 3rd puzzle yet that would at least stop the crows bothering you?

no obviously I haven't :-(
but I'll manage somehow - just found another red one, now there's over 60 in the bin - at leas that'll last until I was able to fetch myself something to eat t ;-)