My biggest frustration is the builders! Geez, it takes forever to get a master builder. As far as the farming goes, I was having the same problem for quite awhile. Currently I have three villages going. The very first village I started lost two 9 year olders and 2 adults to starvation the first or second night I was playing. After that, I sat all evening and most of the next morning doing nothing but guiding their harvesting, watering of crops, fishing and coconut gathering. Now, I rarely play that village (I'm trying to get the ungodly amount of tech points needed to reach the final stages) but whenever I check on them, there is oodles and oodles of food and some are harvesting or watering crops, some are fishing and some are gathering coconuts (unless of course there are no coconuts available). There is a population of 37 but there was like 112000 food points available last time I looked. So as frustrating as it is to have to sit and babysit them to teach them, they do eventually learn and that is without any patch. So keep up hope!