Can anyone assist in how to instruct settlers to farm and does each have a maximum?

I have planted so many crops and at first I tried to organise who picked what, but now I have no idea who is allocated to which crop. I have many that are red suggesting that nobody is tending to them.

I was on about 50 food, but I ordered a couple of settlers to tend to a few red crops and it has dropped to 35?

Yeah, same happened to me. I had around 45 food and now I'm around 20. As it turns out, it's better not to assign them to crops because then your food meter won't go down. Also is there some better way of increasing food? Planting crop after crop can be quite tedious and annoying.

Mutfruit spam is ur frand

if I recall correctly each settler can farm around 6 plants, though I have no clue as to how the proximity works. I tend to plant in multiples of 6, assign the theoretical right amount of people, and it tends to sort itself out. MAGIC!

im kinda as confused as you are but i have a hypothesis. i THINK it depends on your settlers outfits. now i could be totally wrong. but I've noticed certain settlers come to the settlement wearing different things and heres my guess, the ones wearing spike armor are great for guard duty and supply lines, the farmer looking people are obviously good at farming, the people in suits are best at shops and maybe second best at supply lines. now i could be totally wrong but I've noticed certain settlements that have settlers based on farming like abernathy farm (at least on my save) only have like 2 people in it but has almost 20-25 food resources and i checked and they are all green and assigned, but then if i plant crops at the castle i had to put 3 settlers to only harvest 12 crops which is only 4 per settler as opposed to the abernathy farm which is 12 per settler. this is just my guess as to why this happens its rather random for me tbh some settlements just have harder workers sometimes lol

PS mutfruit saves lives.

Each settler can farm 6 food worth of crops. So 6 mutfruit trees or 12 other crops. Settler management is a pain in this game at the moment but there are a few ways to make it easier. One, is the bell, ring it and all the settlers come to it. You can assign them from there. Another is you can give clothes and equipment to your followers. I give the food to my farmers. If they have a mutfruit on them, they are my mutfruit farmers etc.. My shopkeepers wear clean dresses and suits. I don't bother with guards, just spam turrets. If in doubt, unassign everyone and start again, which can be a pain if you have 20 settlers. Also, try just storing all of your crops, bring your food down to 0, and then replant them. But in batches of 6 or 12. Assign farmers slowly, make sure they are working their full amount before assigning another, if you do it correctly, your food will increase in 6's

I did that, but nothing is changing. I've planted for sure like 30-40 mutfruits but food count doesn't change much.

You have to assign people to it lol

The 6 mutfruit trees and 12 other crops is correct. You can find out who is attending what by going into build mode, and highlight the person. Anything they're assigned to will also turn green. Of course, getting the line of sight is tricky.

What I did was put the bell in the center of my crops. I ring it, then they circle around the bell. I highlight them, and then wrap the camera around to see the crops. Works out nice.

Be mindful you do not need to assign every plant. Thankfully, Bethesda saw this was going to be irritating and helped us out by having the settler take the unassigned crops around the one you select. The settler will take 12 0.5 or 6 1 fruit if they're next to each other.

Starting out, of course, you may have settlers doing different crops. You can re-assign them if a specific crop has grown in size. For example, I had one settler doing razorgrain and tatos, but once I got more settlers, I just re-assigned him to razorgrain completely. He does all 12 plants now.

Even if the "person" icon is green, you can still re-assign. This helps manage settlers. It takes patience and time.

Tip: Take all the Raider Left Leg armor you can get. Pretty much on most of them. Then, give them to settlers who are assigned. Fast way to tell them apart. I use raider gear because it's the most abundant out there.

Hope this helps.