As I put my idea into the "general discussion" sub-forum as an reply, while it would fit better here, please allow me to quote myself (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2800224&postcount=37)

Distribution of food could easily been done, given that some concepts would be changed (which would make the whole more realistic, anyway...)

1) Population growth doesn't depend on the absolute food available, anymore. It would depend on the "necessary" food available, though. What does this mean?
Spoken in terms of Civ3, a pophead would reproduce every 10 turns. That means, 10 popheads would reproduce this new pophead every turn - under the assumption, that enough food for 11 pops would be available.
This is realistic, as you don't have more children, just because you have a bigger food store the next block. But more people have more children, causing more population - if both can survive.

2) Any food produced but not consumed in your city, goes to the national "basket" or pool. From there, it will be distributed to cities which lack food. Let's assume you have a surplus of 5 food and 3 cities, which lack it. They would get the food needed due to internal (automatic distribution).
In case you would have 3 surplus and 5 cities running short (which by the way, could then only be caused by military actions or other forms of loosing territory, thus reducing MM further), the cities with the highest impact of having a shortage would get it (under the assumption that starving causes unhappiness - again, this is a concept which currently is missing in the game).
Easy to calculate, and no need for micro-management at all.
The pre-requisite for distribution would be a road or ship or air connection, obviously.

3) This would make for more accurate city placing. You could have the farm areas, and the industrial areas as well. Cities like New York, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin completely are dependant on food coming from outside of their city limits.
There would be less benefit of concepts like OCP as well, thus lowering the "exploitive" factors.
So, this in turn would mean much more realism in the game.

4) It doesn't seem so complicated to make the AI identify bonus ressources. A tile with wheat or any other bonus ressource is easily to identify for both, the human player and the AI.
The AI then even could handle modded ressources more easily and wouldn't fail to place the cities in an "optimal" way, anymore.

This would be very easy to understand, it would definetely require less micro-management and I don't see a major difficulty for the programming.

Voila! :goodjob:

I was under the impression that CIV4 was going to work something like this, however I feel that city growth shouldn't just be about having the food or birth rates. Cities often grow because they attract people. Marketplaces, Universities, and most other improvements should increase the draw towards moving there. I like how one of the Conquests scenarios has their Commercial Harbour allow size 3 growth, instead of a hospital, more realism there. Culture would have an affect as well, I believe to make it realistic. But I agree, we don't see Megopolises in the middle of Saskatchewan and yet there are many cities around the world where the population for outstrips the local food production.

i don't know how many times i've referred to Master of Magic...

it has a growth based solely on race reproduction skills... if there's enough food to suport city's population and a square is available, then the population increases by a fixed number... when it reaches a certain milestone, then a new head appears...

the extra food was showed in the main screen just above the extra gold... the extra food, of course, did not accumulate... and it was used to feed the military

Your idea certainly makes a lot of sense Commander Bello, and I can see it being a lot more palatable than my idea (which it is quite similar to, in some regards) due to the absence of micromanagement.
That said, though, I would also like to have an option within this system to either DENY food to a city OR to send more than it needs. Perhaps if you have the default system, as you have described, but with an option to reduce or increase the allocation of food to certain cities.
This may be because you want to keep it for international trade purposes, or because you want to boost a city's health a bit more, or perhaps a city is resisting your rule, and you want to teach them a lesson :evil:

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

i hate to reiterate, but the food system in civ3 (and all past civ games) is drastically unrealistic. Western kansas is a sparcely populated area with tons of food. Big cities simply don't occur in farming locations, with the few exceptions of course.

Me too, I think civ's system is totally unrealstic. But I think the city can grow over the food available. When it happens, the city just starve, but the population can still grow.

Thanks for the positive responses :)

@Aussie_Lurker:
It seems to be my fate to have to disagree with you :p

My concept is based on the fact, that more food doesn't mean more ... whatever. The diversity of food could have a benefit, though (this seems already to be in the game).
Do you feel better with the third steak, after you already had two of them? Ok... maybe a bad example :D , but you see the picture...

And I really would like to see that "starving" cities causes problems. This was one of the major weaknesses of Civ3, where you could starve a city of 12 pop down to 1 and they would all stay happy.... :confused: Starving just means killing... and who would expect the citizens, may they be from your or foreign nations, to stay happy with this?

To have the reproduction being based on the "natural" reproduction rate (given that food is available to stay alive) has the additional benefit of minimize the "settler explosion", which was a viable, yet unrealistic option in Civ3.
With this concept, the location of your first city would become almost neutral, meaning that whereever the map generator makes you come up, you would have the same chances. Of course, for the next city, the picture would be totally different. But again, this just means a more realistic feeling, as you would have to do, what the early settlers did as well - you would have to look carefully for a good spot for the next cities.

Sorry, Commander Bello, I think I 'misrepresented' myself in my previous posts-judging from your response.
My thoughts were tied into the whole Food/Health/Happiness model. I too think it is too easy to starve a city from 12 down to 1-whilst not hurting happiness-AND I do feel that the previous direct connection between food and population growth was stupid too! However, I think there SHOULD be a link between a city's health, and both the amount AND variety of food that city has at its disposal. After all, if you have a modern metropolis like NYC, and forced that city to survive on a ration of 1 serve of meat and potato per person, twice a day, how happy and healthy do you think that population would be? As health and happiness decline, so does the City's overall rate of growth (though I confess that both religion and politics play a part as well). The idea I had was not 'starve them to make them happy'-which is dumb-but 'starve them to shut them up'. That is, starving them makes them more unhappy, but reduces the chance and effects of them resisting. That said, though, my key reason for wanting to be able to 'interfere' in the automatic approach is to allow myself-as the player-to keep food aside for international trade. Please note that I think your idea is really REALLY good, I just think that some player input should still be allowed-though kept to a bare minimum.
Hope that makes sense.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.