Lap

The Lap is a city built onto an enormous carving of an old man sitting indian-style. It is the Realm's most valuable tributary, and the agricultural center of the South. It produces enough grain to feed itself and the Imperial Legion stationed there, as well as have enough excess to feed Gem and export grains back to the Realm. It is thoroughly detailed in Time of Tumult.

Demographic and Agricultural Speculation

We know the Lap feeds itself and the Imperial Legion plus auxiliary forces for certain. It also maintains enough stockpiled grain to last for years. We also know for a fact it sends grain to Gem and back to the Blessed Isle. So how much farmland stretches out around the Lap?

A Legion plus "auxiliary forces" is 20,000 troops, half imperial, half local. The Lap isn't a metropolis like the other big cities, so it certainly doesn't have a million people (I can't find specific numbers, dag nabbit). I'm going to average its population by using the largest of the Varang cities, 250,000, and the second largest Harborhead city Bent Creek at 400,000. The Lap has 325,000 people until someone makes a better speculation or finds the hard number.

Gem has at least a million people. It probably only has two harvests, during the Storm seasons and Winter, instead of the three to five most of Creation has. And those harvests are probably pathetic, whatever can fit in the shadow of the volcano or grown in lava tubes. The Lap must feed Gem.

Finally, since the Lap is a Realm tributary, chances are poor it'd let the country export more grain to an independent despotism than to the Realm. So let's say its excess exports are divided in half between Gem and the Blessed Isle.

So, the Lap feeds:
20000+325,000+1,000,000+1,000,000= 2,345,000.

Assuming that Second Age agriculture can support 500 people per square mile, that means there are 4,690 square miles of agriculture sprawling around the Lap, no doubt stretching to the Inner Sea, being worked heavily by the locals. That's almost 3 million acres. ToT states "thousands upon thousands of acres" which is clearly not "millions of acres." If Lap technology equals modern American Agri-tech at 2000 people per square mile, it can get the number down to 1172 sq. miles, or 750,000 acres, which "thousands upon thousands" could conceivably mean. That is First Age level agricultural output, which probably means a lot of the Realm's best agri-artifacts are currently being used in Lap to supplement the break-back agricultural economy of the place.

The Lap is the most agriculturally advanced place in all of Creation. --UncleChu

== Have you taken into account the longer year of Creation and the multiple harvests/year that Lap undoubtedly gets? US wheat farms usually harvests once per year. The rest of the year the land is used to grow other crops and left fallow in winter. Compare that to intensive rice farming in South East Asia (Thailand and Vietnam notably) that could harvest up to three times a year. (This will exhaust the land quickly though, so generally they only harvest twice and leave the land fallow or plant legumes for the other third.) Lap has ideal weather all year long, and presumably plenty of water. It won't be a stretch to assume 4 harvests a year and with the cooperation of the rice gods to make the rice grow faster, 5 might be possible. - TonyC

There's no doubt in my mind the Lap has five harvests, four of them before Descending Fire, and one more after before winter quickly rushes in. Modern American agriculture can feed about 2100 people per square mile, and so for a 2nd Age nation to produce on the same level they will be using every trick in the book: five harvests, first age artifacts and engineering, agricultural charms, spirit-bullying, devoting the entire population to farming. Good Call, TonyC. --UncleChu