Where does food go?

[Apothicus]

Hello

I'm still out here and going strong.

Up to over 4 K Bannies now and food production is not a problem. Two things helped out.

1. Discovery of the instant flatten tool.
   
2. The realization I was being stupid. Here I'm sitting watching production vs consumption very closely. If the net gain falls below 20k I worry and throw on 8 or ten new farms. But I have 300 labourers. Why only try and keep barely above water? Use the flatten tool and add 100 farms!!! So food production isn't a problem anymore. 
   

Doesn't solve my frustration with the accounting system though. I create a profit of 50K food. buy 25k more and watch my "total food stored" decrease? I realized it is disappearing into the houses. For which there is no report on how much is stored. No I an NOT going to add everything from avacados to zucinnis on the "stored in homes" report.

I faced a good sized "freeze to death" every winter until I realized it was lack of clothing not fire wood that was the problem.

Is clothing other than "warm" any good to have? There are so many different clothes I can make, but which ones are good protection?

Traders?
I have three or four of the smaller specific traders built. 1 for seeds, 1 for food, 1 for building supplies and a general trader. I have trouble getting the correct goods to each one. I am wondering how the game determines what goods the traders will pick up? for example if I tell them get 100 of A and 100 of B, but there is no A for them to pick up, does that stall them and they do not proceed to B? I find that if a trader is not loading a product I know I have, if I delete some other product(s) from their inventory list they will they go get what I originally wanted.
What are expensive products to sell other than the trade animals? I have found statues they are good, anything else you recommend?

Builders?
I probably cause this myself but (no matter how I try not to) I always seem to end up with a hundred building sites going at once. And sometimes I can sit with all the sites little windows open to watch progress and not one of them moves all year. How can all the builders end up living so far from their work site, if that is the problem. With a hundred sites I haven't been able to really analyze where the individual buliders for each site are.

1. Is there an order that building get built? I seem to notice houses first, decorations last. If there is an order it would be good to know.
   
2. If there are 100 sites going to they all get materials delivered before work gets done on any? For example if I cannot deliver all the stone for one house, will that stop construction on the house next door that already has the stone delivered?
   
3. Or should I just stop ordering too many building at once?
   

As I'm not too worried about starvation now I can afford to look ahead. And a question comes to mind. What is the end game here? Can you achieve a large stable population where births basically match deaths without new housing? I can't expand food production forever, the map has edges. If you build multiple food traders can you afford to import enough food for a growing population?