Initially when I started playing, I was focusing quite a bit of my population as farmers, so as to grow quickly to fill the other population slots, but the food consumption of populations seemed to be quite high. Looking it up according to the wiki, the food consumed by each population is 8 units, in addition the total population consumes 1/10th the square of the total population. That means that at minimum each population consumes at least 8 units of food, and likely much more. This means that only with strong upgrades for farmers, and a very low population will farmers actually pay their own upkeep.

This makes it a net loss to run farmers just to fill your population slots in order to run industry, money, or science jobs, especially if you have a lot of food income without the farmers, as the extra base population will increase the exponential upkeep costs for populations. Building food producing districts in order to increase your population to run other economic jobs also will only make sense if you either need the flexibility, or you can double or triple (or more than that late game) the resource provided by the district dedicated to that resource.

That's not to say that food and population are not good. Population is used directly for military production, as well as providing passive resources outside of their job assignments with certain upgrades. And of course there are the agrarian stars. However unlike in Endless Legends, assigning food producing population will in the long run cost you industry, dust, and science, rather than in the long run providing you with more of it.

So in the end, I am thinking that lower population, and lower priority on food may in fact be a stronger way to play the game in many cases, however I would like to hear other people's strategies regarding this as well.

Thanks,

Zanthra

Farmers give a base of 6 food, and get +2 with one of the first Infrastuctures (Granaries)... so they are close to Food neutral fairly early

Each turn your population is working a farming job is a turn that that population is not working and industry or science job, and normally until later in the game, at best feed only one more population. If that population is going to be used as an industry or science job. Unless you want other passive benefits of the population, at the cost of not having the industry or science they could be producing while the population grows, or need the growth to build military units, it's not that beneficial.

In the case where each unit of population consumes more food than a farmer can produce, it actually ends up being a cost to your economy to run farmers. If for example, 3 farmers can only support 2 additional population, then it would be better to assign those three farmers to the other jobs, than to grow two more population to work the other jobs.

Unlike many 4x games. Population does not directly represent your workforce. Districts and exploitations produce vast amounts of economy, independent of your population. While I think that population is important in many cases, I don't see many cases where using that valuable population to get a relatively small amount of additional population growth is worth it if the goal is to have the population to work other jobs like industry or science.

I am not really seeing how farmers benefit in the long run though.

Lets say I produce 8 food per farmer, and I have room for up to 6 farmers. I have 6 population eating 51.6 food per turn, with passive food income of the same for a net of, 0 food/turn. If I assign the population as farmers, then I will produce a net of 48 food per turn, but the food consumption of the next 5 population is 48.5, so I only gain 5 non-farmer workers. 

So now there are 6 farmers that are needed to maintain the total food for the 11 population, and only 5 other jobs filled. You have 5 more population, which improves influence, defense, recruitable population, and could provide agrarian stars, at the cost of other economy since you have only 5 population that can be freely distributed.

If you prioritize farmers first, it gets worse the more farming districts you build. Farming districts don't increase the food output per farmer, but do increase the base population without farmers, in effect this reduces the value of each farmer, and at the same time increases the number of farmers that can be run. If you have 4 farming districts in the above example for a total of 10 possible farmers, and your passive food income supports those 10 population (90 food eaten), you can get up to 80 food from 10 farmers. This means you can grow your population to between 17 (+5.1 food per turn) and 18 (-6.4 food per turn), for 2-3 less non-farmer population than if you simply placed those farmers in other jobs to start with.

Perhaps I am missing it, but when I run the numbers, farmers are long term losses as well as short term losses.

As far as the math goes, it looks like 8 food per farmer is a net long term loss all the time. At 10 food per farmer, it's a gain up to 10 population. 12 food per farmer up to 20 population, 14 food per farmer 30 population and so on until microbiology reduces pop food upkeep.

The only use I see, other than influence/flat per pop yields you mentioned, is to help with military production pop costs. From what I've seen so far, the food surplus needed for a next pop is fairly static and not overly high (maybe it shoots up with very high pop cities - haven't had one yet). That lets you stay at the number of pops you can support without farmers and only use them to quickly recoup pops lost when you build a unit.

I personally changed my favorite worker to farmer especially at the beginning of the game until you  have significant food surplus.

You can get more immediate bonuses from other workers, but long term population is critical. You are really going to be hampered if you need to build military and your cities have no population. But the most important thing at the start of the game is influence. More influence -> quicker expansion.