Farm area calculator for cities (FR based)

[jester47]

In FR it is stated that there are 9 poeople living in the countryside for every 1 person living in a city. They then mention that this term is relative because someone living in a large city might see someone living in a town as a bumpkin. So for these calculations there are 7 people in the country for every 1 in a town or city even though it begins the calculation multiplying by 9.

This came out of my thoughts about how cities were fed, reading WHFRP, and looking at city and town sizes in the FRCS and looking at the FR map.

Each city or town needs a ready supply of food and material to operate. This causes villages, Hamlets and Thorps to spring up around towns and cities. Also, it is assumed each town and city has a range of immediate influence and hegemony. Mostly this is anywhere within a days ride from the town for larger cities or a couple of miles for smaller towns. What this method determines is the range of a citiy or town's jurisdiction and the support network that exists around it.

The distance that this network of farms and villages extends is 1 + (1 mile for every thousand inhabitants, rounding up). With a maximum of 50 miles. Most villages would be about 15 miles from the city.

If there is not 1000 people in the settlement it is assumed that the farms and lesser settlements extend for mile. However small towns still get two miles.

The surrounding network will always start at the village level and work down.

Villages hamlets and thorps are self sustaining and thus only have farms extending 1 mile. For towns and cities there are 7 people in the farming network for every 1 person in the town or city.

There are allways more thorps than hamlets than villages.

Every person in a village means 6 people in hamlets and thorps surrounding the town or city.

Every person in a hamlet means 2 people in a thorp.

So with a small town of 1000 people we have a pool of 9000 people to allocate into villages, hamlets and thorps nearby.

1 villager costs 7 from the pool. so we divide the outlying population by 7 (this includes out villager) to see how many villagers we have. 9000/7 = 1286 villagers. That can get us 2 or 3 villages within 2 miles of the town.

The number we have in hamlets and thorps is 7714. to figure out the population housed in hamlets we divide this by 3.

7714/3 = 2571 people in hamlets. So that means we have 6 or 7 hamlets. So all thats left is to determine the number of thorps. 7714 - 2571= 5143 people in thorps. That is at least 64 thorps.

So in outside our town of 1000 people, we decide to have 3 villages within 2 miles of the town with 6 hamlets within a mile of the villages (fairly evenly dispersed) and 10 - 11 thorps within a mile of each hamlet.

Now lets go for the big fish: Waterdeep.

waterdeep has a population of 132,661. Thats a pool of 1193949 people in the 5 miles outside Waterdeep (which is close to the population listed for the nation in the FRCS, minus @100,000).

1193949/7 = 170564 people in villages. @300 villages.
1193949 - 170564 = 1023385/3 = 341128 people in hamlets. @2532 hamlets
1023385 - 341128 = 682257 people in thorps. @21320

Meaning in a 3927(7854/2 b/c WD is a port)sq mile area you will have waterdeep and 300 villages, 2532 hamlets, 21320 thorps. Each village has 8 hamlets within a mile of it, and each hamlet has about 8 thorps within one mile of it.

What this does is it gives you an idea of what the frequency might be of encountering a thorp, hamlet or village after leaving a town as characters enter and leave a city or town. The villages would be closer to the roads coming to and from waterdeep wioth the hamlets being off the beaten paths and the thorps moreso.

All the areas of the villages thorps and hamlets should fit within the distance of 2 miles wich is the minimum distance for a small town. Larger towns and cities will have exponentialy more area to concentrate the villages. This works well for cities or towns that are coastal in nature or are up against a terrain feature that does notpermit farming. All in all this makes sense as the nature of agriculture would require nearby and ready labor.

Aaron.

 

[BobROE]

I think waterdeep's a bit of a bad example because it's stated that they get alot of their food from Greenfields, decreasing the number of supporting villages (etc) needed to support the population.
I know in 2E (I'd have to check if the same is true for 3E) that the population of waterdeep swells to 600000 during the summer months, a lot of which is a transient population. And due to the general traveling ability of the common person a good chunk of that would have to live in the nearby area.

 

[jester47]

I would say that the need of food from greenfields is a result of the summer population rise. I think that population would come from seaborn and caravan merchants. (more seaborn though, being a major port). As for being a bad example, I think that is why I chose it. The sheer sizeshows that even with 300 villages nearby the heros are only going to see a small fraction of that.

Aaron.

 

[BobROE]

Ok, see where you're coming from now.

 

[trancejeremy]

The Second World Sourcebook mentions food production.

For medieval level farming, each acre produces about 6 bushels of grain per year. Farming in the mid 19th century produced about 15. (Now we're up to 70 to 140, depending on the specific plant).

A family of four needs 35 bushels a year.

 

[BobROE]

A family of four needs 35 bushels a year.

Of just grain? Or food equivalent to that? (ie meat, fish, etc)

 

[Piratecat]

Don't forget the effect of plant growth and weather control spells that mitigate killing frosts. With plant growth alone, food production rises by a third -- thus presumably needing roughly a third less farmers to produce the same amount of crops.

 

[jgbrowning]

here's some numbers that might help you.

rome had to import around 400,000 tons of grain a year. that's about 13,333,333 bushels if you use 60 pounds for a bushel of wheat. it could be more or less bushels as that's more a modern number and grain weight varies heavily due to humidity.

assuming waterdeep's 1/4 the size of rome, thats still a lot of grain. 3,333,333 bushels.

The standard roman ship for transporting grain could carry 12,500 bushels so thats about 267 ships a year simply carrying grain for waterdeep.

joe b.

 

[jester47]

I think 1.1 million people could handle that level of production, even without added spells. These are mostly commoners and experts.

Aaron.

 

[jgbrowning]

Of just grain? Or food equivalent to that? (ie meat, fish, etc)

more roman grain crunchy goodness!

Unchained field slaves were given 1 1/8 bushels of wheat a month. Also they were given oil, salt, olives and wine.

Slaves with easier work were given only 3/4 bushel a month along with oil, salt, olives and wine.

The roman system of agriculture was more efficient than medieval because of the use of slavery. Although acre per acre returns may be similiar, the cost of production is lowered due slavery.

a rough number of 10 bushels of grain a year per person would probably be accurate enough for your perposes.

Diocletian's Edit on maximum prices said that a wagon load of grain would double its price for a 300-400 mile journey. This obviously means it was doubling faster than that rate or else he wouldn't have tried to set a rate.. quick breakdown.. a wagon would charge the equivalent of 1 bushel of wheat cost for a 20 mile journey under the edict. wagons carried around 15 bushels.

joe b.