My medieval city, they’re having food problems. People just die on the streets clutching their bellies, children with skin sticking to their bones are a common sight, and there are reports of cannibalism in the darker areas of town.
The misuse of the land and the El Niño that comes every four years has rendered the crops useless. Any crops we had in the granaries were stolen last year by bandits.
Luckily, the town has come to be under new management. The top position in the town was just bought by some nice old man. However, what the people don’t know, is that this old man is actually a front for a large group. This group consists of people with modern knowledge, each person within this group specializes in a specific field. What this means, is that there’s a person on this group for every single field of science, technology, and politics.
The guy who specializes in farming took one look at the fields and went “tsk tsk”. He immediately had the leader of the town order the farmers to adapt crop rotation. He also started work on better farming tools, fertilizer and better irrigation practices.
Unfortunately, it still wasn’t enough. People were still starving even with the amount of food being even better than the last best harvest they’ve ever had.
Fortunately though, magic exists in this world. Enlisting the help of an elf who specializes in plant magic, they started work on a program to increase crop yields to modern day standards.
I just need a magic system that allows for medieval crops to be quickly developed into their modern counterparts. It mustn’t be too quick however, as that would probably make it boring.