It's the castles and their upgrades that consume the most food it seems. The first upgrade consumes two. The next three. If you upgrade all your castles as I did in the first game then you go negative on food and it's constant rebellions. Also, for some odd reason the rice exchange consumes two food, and some of the tech advances consume food too! So you really have to keep an eye on that. Money doesn't seem to be an issue at all for me but since you can't seem to buy or trade for food it's a resource you have to really watch. Doing a lot better in the second game. Picked the clan on the main island in the far north and it's been cake so far.