Kenshi: Food Production Guide

If you want to know how much food you need to produce to feed your team. And such. Also about where to place your first city to start your stuff going.

Other Kenshi Guides:

• Kenshi: Advanced Training Guide
• Kenshi: Food Production Guide
• Kenshi: How to Play (Roleplaying Tips)
• Kenshi: A Quick Start Guide
• Kenshi: A Guide to Building Your First Town
• Kenshi: Combat Leveling Guide

Kenshi: Food Production Guide

• I will continue to build this guide as I go.
• 4 hydro wheat farms + 3 hydro green fruit farm will produce foodcubes to feed 15 Greenlanders
• Such small food production chain can be handles by 1 hive drone worker

How much food do I need to produce?

Have you ever wondered how much your Greeenlander eats? Its just 40 nu per day! So you dont need to have a huge food production to feed your team. Its enough with very few farms if you produce high quality food like Foodcubes. Here is my math:

Consumption
A Greenlander (x1.00 hunger) eats 40 nutrition (nu) per day

Production
One Hydro wheat/greenfruit farm produces 21,6 plants per day
Thats 2,16 bread (30 nu) per day, which is ~65 nu per day, or…
2,16 food cubes (75 nu) per day, which is 162 nu per day

Wheat XL farm produces 95 crops per day (exluding harvesting time)
Thats 9,5 bread per day which is 285 nu per day
Build 4 hydro greenfruit farms (produces 84 greenfruit per day) and you will be able to turn them breads into 9,5 foodcubes, thats 712 nu per day.

To feed 15 men (600 nu)

• 20 Bread: You need 10 hydro wheat farms, or…
• 8 Foodcubes: You need 4 hydro wheat farms + 3 hydro greenfruit farm

To feed 30 men (1200 nu)

• 40 Bread: You need 19 hydro wheat farms, or…
• 16 Foodcubes: You need 9 hydro wheat farms + 6 hydro greenfruit farm

Or if you want to start really low, with only 2 farms… 1 Hydro wheat farm + 1 hydrogreen fruit farm will feed 5 men.

If you want to have a an effective hydro farm balance, then build 8 (7,4) hydro greenfruit farm and 10 hydro wheat farms. 8 hydro greenfruit and 10 hydro wheat farms will give you 21 foodcubes per day, thats 1575 nu, enough to feed 39 Greenlanders every!

How many farms can 1 farmer handle?

This is what my testing is showing:

Hydroponic farms – 25-33 farms per 1 farmer
They grow faster (5% per hour, traditional farms grow 4% per hour) and seems to be quicker to harvest. My farmer that works at 1.3 speed, can manage 33 hydro farms on his own (594 crops), meaning that after he harvested the 33th farm, the first farm that he started at, has fully grown back and he starts to harvest that farm again. A farmer at 1.0 speed can manage around 25 hydro farms (450 crops). Note that some crops, like greenfruit, arent harvestable for very long time, but wheat is.

Riceweed L farms – 4 farms per 1 farmer
A farmer at 1.0-1.3 speed (depends on farmers level) can handle 260-340 crops on his own, meaning that after he harvested 340 crops of riceweed, the first farm that he started at, has fully grown back and he starts to harvest that farm again. So you dont have to build more than 4 large riceweed farms (324 crops) per farmer. A farmer will level very quickly so my suggestions is to aim for 4 large farms directly (if you can afford that).

Hemp L farms – 4 farms per 1 farmer
Same as Riceweed. See above.

Cactus XL farms – 4 farms per 1 farmer
1 farmer at a skill level that makes him work at 1.0x speed can handle ~3,75 farms, thats 240 crops. A farmer that works at speed of 1.3x, can handle 4,75 farms, thats around 312 crops. Cactus seems to grow 4% per hour.

Wheat XL farms – 4-5 farms per 1 farmer
1 farmer harvesting speed of 1.0x can handle 4 farms, thats 400 crops. While a farmer at a harvesting speed of 1.2x or higher, can handle 5 farms, thats 500 crops. Wheat seems to grow 4% per hour.

Note!

1- Use Hive Drone Workers as your farmers! They not only level 20% faster, but they do things 20% better as well. This is true for evething else, if you want a good thieve, use one that has Racial XP x1.200 bonus in thievery. Two Hive Drones Workers can be recruited in Clownsteady and one, Beep, can be found in Mongrel.

2- Don’t forget to set up lights, indoors and outdoors around your farms. Working in darkness, at night or indoors, effects efficiency negatively.

Food production ratio

Note: To figure out how much food you need to produce to feed your team, and how many farms you need to build, see earlier section.

Food cubes, 75 nu
Need 1 bread and 8 greenfruits to create.
1 bread = 1 flour + water = 10 wheatstraws
Crop ratio: 10:8 (10 wheat plants, 8 vegitable plant)

Dustwiches, 70 nu
Need 1 bread and 8 cactus to create.
1 bread = 1 flour + water = 10 wheatstraws
Crop ratio: 10:8 (10 wheat plant, 8 cactus plant)

Hashish (drugs)
5 hemp plants to produce 1 hashish

Fuel production

My testing, with all science fully developed, shows this:

• You need 2 hydro hemp farms per 1 Generator II (Power output: 130), or…
• 1 Large hemp farm per 2 Generator II
  One of my workers was able to handle delivery to 4 generators, do 2 large hemp farms, and make fuel (in that order). Unfortunately, he bugged out and stopped working so I had to dedicate him to farming only while another man was delivering and producing fuel.
• One farmer can handle 4 Large Hemp farms, or 33+ Hydro hemp farms (hydro farms grows faster and are easier to harvest it seems)

Where on the map to produce food?

There are of course several places to produce food. I chose a spot east of the road between the Hub (center of the map) and Shark (swamps). At this spot, arid lands and swamp connects, which made it possible to farm hemp (100%), wheat (60%), cactus (100%) and riceweed (100%). Here we can find a lot of water, stone, iron and copper. Also, it rains all the time in the swamp so your rice and hemp fields wont need any well access. At the beginning, when you cant create hydropronic farms to grow greenfruit, you can cook dustwiches (70 nu) by combining bread and cactus.

This place is also outsite anybodys territory so its tax free.

Later, when my technology allowed, I chose to create Hydropnic wheat farm which allowed me to farm wheat indoors at 100% crop yield. I also started to grow greenfruit indoors and therefore switched from cooking dustwitches to foodcubes.

See pictures above for placement.

You will get attacked by level 10-20 bandits from time to time. They are “easy” to defeat, and even easier if you build walls like I did and put up some turrets. I used three turrets and I shoot attackers from behind that tried to break my gate. The gate is bulky and if you shoot from the sides, you will not always hit the enemy, instead, you will hit the sides of the gate. It is therefore better to place your turrets behind the enemy (infront of the gate). I manned 3 turrets with my robots/skeletons. They are specialist at using turrets (20% bonus!), meaning: they level 20% faster and shoot 20% better.

You will also get attacked by Swamp raptors level 25-30, kinda often. They will eat your crops. I had a very hard time to stop them in the beginning when I started out and was a low lever flatskin. They will not attack your men, they will just eat your crops. If you let them be, they will walk away after they eat evetyhing. So early I didnt farm, but rather concentrated on science and exploring/leveling my fighting skills. Later, when my turret skills got better, I killed them off with my turrets only when they tried to force them selves through my gates.

If raptors does not commit a crime, they are seen as a friendly unit and will not be shot at before they attack your gate or a farm. Put a farm outside your gates, that way raptors will attack this farm before they attack your gates, that way, your turrets will start shoot at them much earlier. That hemp farm as you see in the second image is placed in swamp lands, where it rains non-stop, that way no men have to take care of it, it grows on its own. And the fresh crops will attract raports.

Three XL cactus farms and 20 hydropnic wheat farms, 2 grain silos, 2 bread ovens and 1 cooking station. I was massproducing dustwiches. Three men was taking care of the production to feed my team of 11 heads. I was overproducing food like crazy. Later, when the farmers reached level 60, only two men was enough for this.