>>68806
>>68810
>>68815
The jobs other than "food" seem to be there just to produce crafting materials for the player, and it doesn't seem like the "food" job is affected by the presence of any food items that might be in harvest boxes or traps.
Not sure if different NPC classes produce different amounts on the "food" job, but it seems they will eat different amounts, with the big monsters eating fucktons, so unless you want to fill the boxes yourself a lot, you'll need a lot of NPCs set to "food". Keep in mind they only fill the box nearest to their set "location", and whatever they eat will be pulled from the same box.
Similarly, if they're assigned to livestock, farming, or harvesting, everything goes to the nearest harvest box. If you set up a big enough farm to be producing all ten plantable crops, that will produce twenty different items and fill a harvest box entirely all on its own, so if you've got that and NPCs on harvest and/or livestock, you'll things will disappear into the aether.
It seems like NPC farming is very inefficient, and it might be easier to just use two stone or three wood planters, enough for one slot for each item and a second/third slot for items you find yourself using more.
The "harvest" job will produce leaves, fibers, berries, and also wonderberries, which grant XP when eaten. Any companion with you will get some XP when you eat them, or you can just feed them directly to the NPC. I frequently switch to the FemC just to eat them, so she's more capable in the fights where I'm forced to use her.
Anon pointed out the issues with livestock being mostly non-functional. Tiddy milk can be used to make food to fast-age loli into adults, but if you've gone to the trouble to enable loli, I'm not sure why you'd want to do this. Tiddy milk can't replace cow milk in recipes. Cannibalism is one thing, but human butter is right out!
If you do want shitloads of NPCs, there's some other stuff I have been able to gather.
If they're set to enter houses, they will only check for an empty bed in the building nearest their location point, and then a bed outside in their set territory. Not sure if the buildings are coded to have a max occupancy beyond the number of beds you can stuff in. Only use leaf beds, because NPCs can walk over them. If you stuff in as many wooden beds as you can, NPCs will get stuck in the building and then not do their job.
With native tent, you can stuff in five leaf beds, or six if you don't mind blocking the door. Not sure if it's a good idea to leave beds hanging off into empty space, but it can be done to squeeze in more. Wood cabins are bigger, and stone houses are even bigger. You can build them into hillsides.
Apparently NPCs will also run into issues if buildings are too close together. Currently trying out a set-up with one central well and food box, with four houses as far apart as I can manage, so the NPCs in each building only have territorial overlap on the well and food box, and the buildings at the far edge of their territory.
This could help if your NPCs hate each other, since that will drain "moral" and they don't seem to do SHIT at low morale. Apparently if you don't want this hassle, you can just switch off love and sex for the NPCs, and this will unfuck their shit. Not sure if you'll need to do this for everyone, or just the problem NPCs.
Monsters and animals don't use beds. They can make good guards, but it seems like having them set to a job in addition will make them derp out and do the job over killing raiders.
Anyone with sufficiently low food and water levels will take longer to heal, and won't heal to full, so pay attention to how rapidly your food box empties without your influence. Wells refill at a set rate, but I guess you could make more wells and move them to the buildings, once you have the reources.