[Fantasy] [Low-Tech] Crops with extremely short cycle and low yield

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Hmm. Indeed I haven't put much (any?) thought into proportionally reducing the work required.

I'm basically looking for a way to create a setting with much shorter harvest cycles - numbered in days, or at most weeks.

Oh, and I intended the seeds/fruits to be as long-lasting as normal ones.

You might want to consider a tree crop, or at least something perennial. Instead of growing an entire new plant in days, which is pretty extreme, it grows a new crop of seeds, nuts, fruits or edible flowers. And of course ever-blooming plants are a fantasy tradition.

You may also want to think about what the plant gets out of doing this. Cycling your whole body this fast seems totally useless unless there are severe seasons that will kill you on the same sort of timescale, or weekly fires that devastate the ecosystem. Continuously fruiting at least might give you some sort of reproductive advantage, though you need a really good seed dispersal mechanism to make it pay off for anything this fast. Maybe the fruit ripens into balloons....

[Anthony]

Some algae do have extremely short cycles, though the yield is generally going to vary with the quantity of nutrients available to be consumed.

A problem with your scheme, actually, is that, unless the unharvested crops promptly rot, it may be easier to just let multiple crops pile up and harvest them all at once.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Anthony

A problem with your scheme, actually, is that, unless the unharvested crops promptly rot, it may be easier to just let multiple crops pile up and harvest them all at once.

It's fantasy so maybe unharvested crops:

• Spontaneously Generate into pest animals.
• Attract unwanted supernatural vermin (pixies?).
• Anger the gods

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Cycling your whole body this fast seems totally useless unless there are severe seasons that will kill you on the same sort of timescale

The only example that springs to mind is the wildflowers that briefly carpet certain deserts after isolated episodes of rain.

[FuelDrop]

Since this is fantasy, keep in mind that there's an entire collage of magic that will interact with this crop (IE plant magic).

Some of the effects: Increase crop yield (Bless Plants), 1 month's growth in a day (Plant Growth), Instant Harvest (Blossom). These can all interact with your plant in unanticipated ways...

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by FuelDrop

Since this is fantasy, keep in mind that there's an entire collage of magic that will interact with this crop (IE plant magic).

Some of the effects: Increase crop yield (Bless Plants), 1 month's growth in a day (Plant Growth), Instant Harvest (Blossom). These can all interact with your plant in unanticipated ways...

Not touching Standard Magic with a Reach 2,3 staff. Though I suppose RPM's effects will be similar, if there's a mage with enough energy and skill available.

[Varyon]

Probably the best paradigm to go with for something like this would be to have it such that the seeds don't need to be planted - simply tossing them on appropriate soil will result in them taking root and growing. They need a great deal of sunlight - they can grow on well-grazed sod or bare earth, but anything more will result in the seeds simply splitting open and dying. Once they're spread out, they need to be activated via a simple magical ritual (taking a few minutes for mundanes, a second or two for mages).

The plants absorb local mana to grow rapidly, partially depleting it (see later). Once the plants grow to their full height (after a few days), they immediately fruit, using up internal reserves (effectively cannibalizing their own roots and internal structure) to produce as much grain as possible, killing themselves in the process. The plants collapse, ready to be scooped up by the "farmers," but blocking any sort of future growth. If the area still has enough mana, once the plants have been harvested one can simply use the activation ritual again (plenty of seeds inevitably fall as their being harvested) to restart the process.

Mana Depletion and Growing Times: The plants grow at a speed based on the local mana level, but risk depleting mana in the process - for every week in which plants are grown, roll against 10+mod (see later). Failure means mana is downgraded one level. Optionally, use the lower of Thaumatology and Farming instead of 10. Note these rules are partially based on the hunting/gathering guidelines from LTC3.

Very High Mana: Plants grow in 1dx6 hours, and mod is +4. Areas that are Very High Mana for Plant magic are ideal for semi-long term farms, although overgrowth can eventually deplete them.

High Mana: Plants grow in 1dx12 hours, and mod is +2. These are good places for temporary villages and the like.

Normal Mana: Plants grow in 1d days, and mod is +0. It's typically best to only plant one crop in such an area, then move on after harvest.

Low Mana: Plants grow in 1dx2 days, and mod is -2. These areas should be avoided, as it's possible for the mana level to drop while the plants are still growing!

Very Low Mana: Plants grow in 1dx5 days, and mod is -4. Very Low Mana is typically only encountered when the plants drop the mana level of a Low Mana area. Don't even bother trying to grow here - if you reached here due to your currently-growing plants dropping the mana level, the quickest solution to determine how long they take to finish is to simply double (or, more accurately, multiply by 2.5) the time they would have remaining in Low Mana.

No Mana: Plants cannot grow here. If you were trying to grow in Very Low Mana and the mana level dropped, all the plants die without any yields.


For yearly yields, something comparable to Wheat may be appropriate (or there may be multiple types of fast-growing plants, corresponding to each of the types of crops listed in LTC3). For per-crop yields, determine how much of the year the plants will grow during and assume each crop takes 3.5 days to grow.

For labor, field preparation (if necessary) amounts to trimming the grass and spreading seeds and need be done only once per growing season; it may be safe to ignore it (if not, it takes 1/5th the time indicated on LTC3 p 10). Harvesting, however, is more work-intensive, requiring around 5x as many man-days per full growing season (but note you'll be harvesting many times during a growing season).


EDIT: I see you're going with RPM. In that case, replace Thaumatology with Path of Body. The activation ritual is Lesser Sense Body with Area Effect, and the seeds themselves have been engineered to reduce the energy cost of this ritual by 80% (casting it over an acre costs 8 energy). Use the guidelines on RPM43 to determine the effective mana level of a Place of Power.

EDIT2: Changed the growing times to be more variable at the lower end.

[Dwarf99]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Not touching Standard Magic with a Reach 2,3 staff. Though I suppose RPM's effects will be similar, if there's a mage with enough energy and skill available.

You could add Simple and High Powered Collaboration options as desired (T. 132). Make the ritual into a morning community prayer of all farm hands and owners.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Greetings, all!

What would be the unforeseen consequences of a fantasy setting having crops of extremely short lifecycles but also very low yields. E.g. a crop with 1/300 the yield, but capable of providing this yield (and dying) in just 24 hours. Or 1/50 the yield, but with a cycle of 7-10 days.

I am of course postulating this to be fantasy, not historical low-tech. Some more considerations are that (a) it's probably best to make the crop somewhat picky, so that it wouldn't be able to take over the rest of the ecosystem (or make other plants similarly vigorous) and (b) I'm not sure if I want a setting with seasons or without, so I'm wondering about both variants.

How does the labour requirements work?

1/300 the yield doesn't fly with 24 hours, for in many places, the growing season consistutes much less than 300 days per year.

Harvesting was extremely labour-intensive (planting much less so, as per LTC3), in medieval times, so if you have to harvest every day then nobody would ever get anything else done, at all, during those 100-200 days of the year when it there is enough sun and heat for the crop to be able to grow. People would even be too tired to have sex after a harvest day, so no children would be conceived at all during that period of the year, in the rural areas. And of course almost everybody lives in rural areas, with towns and townspeople constituting only a tiny fraction of the population.