I made a new tribe, for helping with the wiki. I noticed that, in the beginning, the food balance issue is not that much of a problem. But as soon as you get more and more families, the economy is unbearable. The only way to survive is to exploit the "caravan food turn for 3 gold" exploit. Each turn, you can make 5 gold in the settlement. After the caravan has returned, you will have enough for at least that amount of turns in "food turns".