in a bad year hunting/gathering, you can lose up to half your clan to starvation. you can't effectively store food if you are constantly romaing. agriculturalists have that benefit.

my theory (personally) is that farming did not start for foodstuffs. also, many of the places where farming is thought to have originated did not have huge seasonal patterns - they enjoy very long growing seasons.


farming, in my opinion, probably started with medicines and luxury goods. herbailsts who would know that certain types of roots and leaves had certain properties would have carried them as they moved about, since you never know when the next time you will come across a similar plant would be. at some point, someone must have realized that seeds and shoots can create new plants, and that got passed along with the rest of the herbalist lore.

at some point, that same click would have been made for hallucanogens, grapes, and, ultimately, grains suitable for making beer. these things were all found in the wild, but a reason to cultivate an unattended, fixed patch of them would be so that you could always have then available for celebration or sacred festivals etc. once that mental/societal leap was made, the next step of performign similar feats with foodstuffs would not have been a long one to make.