Increasing Farm "Growth Rate"

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

Simple question, I'm looking for a simple way to increase the rate at which farms grow.

I've got a city that's basically complete except for multiple fairly decent sized farm zones that haven't grown yet. While the demand is there (I use SPAM) I'm only only getting one or two farms per every ten or so in game years on a good day. Even adjusting taxes to where every other industry  is taxed ludicrously high and farms have no tax hasn't sped things up that much, is there anyway to speed things up? Like a lot to increase Ag demand or something?

 

Also speaking of SPAM, I heard there's traffic controller for it that conflicts with NAM. Is that a default part of the mod or a separate entity? I'm getting higher dilapidation than usual. (Although it could be the new NAM causing that)

[Lucario Boricua 7,027]

The SPAM traffic controller can be installed separately; but it's better to use NAM and raise the network capacity level to ensure traffic congestion and failed route seeking stay at a minimum.  However, you say the rest of the city is doing well, perhaps it's doing too well.  How robust are your educational services?  With more education, less sims will be willing to get dirty on the fields.  Also, try entering God Mode (crtl + alt + shift) and terraform some trees into the fields--air pollution discourages farms, trees can offset that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You can also use the Ditch Set by SimGoober (DitchSet2009 is my plugin folder for this).  Each added lot ups the Farm demand.

[vortext 573]

Check the desirability map, as Dragonxander says IR is finicky when it comes to air polution from traffic, i.e. a  'busy' street lowers the change of it growing. You can - temporarily - increase the desirability by plopping some MMP trees on the empty zones. In my experience this speeds things up, though sometimes there're locations where farms seemingly refuse to grow. 

[SimCoug 5,972]

It also doesn't hurt to lay down a few low density residential zones (think of them as farm houses) near the undeveloped farms - I've noticed that it can help spur development.  Also, be sure to have a way for the farms to get their freight off of the map (the shorter the route the better).  You wouldn't think it, but this factor can have a large affect on farm demand. 

[SteveMSim 275]

One thing to remember is that once your city's population reaches 20,000 you cannot grow any more farms.  That overrides any other factors.

[Lucario Boricua 7,027]

With the SPAM, if I'm not mistaken, the population is raised to 25,000 or even 30,000, I don't remember well because I'll often get gentrification lowering the total residential population, so I'll get one last chance to build farms.