In-Town Farming starts!
Previously the town was such that support activities such as farming happened in the "middle boroughs" that were not shown. Now we are expanding to the middle boroughs, so we need to allocate space for farming, if we are to continue having fresh superveg!
Farm is a new way to make use of a chapelry which is not immediately needed for quarrying or building, or is unsuitable for them. A chapelry which has been quarried or zoned, cannot be used as a farm any more. A farm may be converted to a quarry or zoned for other uses.
A farm equals 100 S-VE1 production shares, which produce approx. 2,500 "superveg" and 7,500 "other veg". Superveg is the first crop of new produce in July, which is coveted because of a higher health effect and the fact that all veg from previous year has spoiled in May.
The NPCC accounts, which start next year, require 35,000*VEG each, and since 15,000 of this is after the spoil, we can count 50,000*VEG each, for the total of 350,000 VEG. Compared to this, the PC consumption is not big, perhaps 20,000 VEG since most of them need to eat stronger stuff.
The current nominal production of system account Farmers, and the 5 Manors, and the vegetable gardens is 162,000 VEG per year. Houston - we have a business opportunity here! If no farms are started, the Farmers account (town) will just get the excess shares and the money.
So about 19 in-town farms could be started even with the current number of mouths. As they are located in urban land (and also protected by the perimeter fortifications soon to be built), the ownership is fully protected and yield quite stable. The chapelries that are bright green in the /Map are available for farming right here. 25 such chapelries exist in opened Boroughs. (Opening a borough means that Town has bought it from the King - King cannot do anything with unopened boroughs.) The grass green chapelries with no quarry geology are likely to be farmable as well when their boroughs are opened.
Farming does not require B.23 to be completed, only zoning of the middle chapelries does, (and urban building is not open yet at all, though is coming closer at this speed of design effort..)
To make farming as easy as possible, it does not yet use the NPC nor other inputs. Instead they are reduced to an annual upkeep cost (similar to eg. Brewery), which goes to Labor. The VEG yield is given as a dividend directly based on a list of chapelries designated as Farms. This allows landowners to create a corporation and put the land there and give the access to a manager who would get an agreed-upon compensation. King is seeking to consolidate his available lands for this purpose and give the manager the title of Viscount of TVA Duchy (King does not have any suitable chapelries though, but this will increase the willingness to buy them). Also NewCorp (who has many) is seeking a similar arrangement.
The farms (at least for now) are equal in costs and production (which will change but not in a few years):
15 mil Production value at book prices 3,000 for superveg, 1,000 for other VEG
- 5 mil Upkeep
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10 mil profit
An upfront investment of 4*S-BLD is required. This goes to wood farm structures that are demolished in the end of farming with 0 value.
Farms announced now will start producing superveg in July, 1627.