Manor Lords solo developer Slavic Magic suspects some players aren't enjoying the city builder's farming element because they don't understand how it works at a fundamental level.
Now, right at the top I'd like to respectfully disagree with Slavic Magic's suggestion that players in general think Manor Lords' farming "sucks," but there is a fair bit of confusion online about how it actually works.
Well, in a Reddit post, the developer theorizes that it is players' lack of understanding, stemming from their experience with other, more traditional city builders, that's causing some frustration in the community. "I think players are used to always building everything in their city builders," Slavic Magic said. "In Manor Lords I actually randomize 2 'strengths' for each region when the session begins.
It could be a rich deposit or a fertility boost. So if you spawn with rich iron and rich clay, fertility is going to be terrible and I kinda expect you to trade for food, cause I want each region to play a little bit different." The developer also said there's a misconception that vegetable gardens are overpowered because players "ignore the disadvantages they come with," namely that "villagers, in theory, will not work their assigned jobs as much if their plots have huge veggie gardens." Frankly, judging from a few Google searches, it appears Slavic Magic is right on the money.
There does seem to be a consensus that the best way to keep villagers fed is to simply build the biggest vegetable garden possible, but according to the developer, going that route causes productivity drawbacks that aren't being considered, not to mention the randomized "strengths" for each region. "Of course there might be more to the story here but I wonder how much players actually understand the 'each region has its strengths' aspect of the game and that, yup, you may start with a region with terrible fertility and speccing it into farming will just make you frustrated," Slavic Magic added.