# How do dwarven cities manage their food problems?



## sandery3 (Sep 14, 2008)

I have always wondered how dwarves and orcs manage to attain food when dwelling in an underground city for years. In Christopher Paolinis' Eragon the dwarves had fields of wheat above their underground habitations.
Has anyone got any idea about it?


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## Ithrynluin (Sep 14, 2008)

The Dwarves apparently traded with Men where they could, exchanging products of their craft for food. It's noted that this was "To the great profit of the Dwarves."

For more information, see The History of Middle-earth volume 12 (The chapter "Of Dwarves and Men"). Really interesting stuff.

As for Orcs, perhaps they had a similar arrangement with evil men of the south and east? Though for some reason I'm inclined to think they were more skilled at producing their own food than Dwarves, especially meats.

There's one rather telling passage in The Lord of the Rings:



> _The Return of the King: The Land of Shadow_
> Neither he nor Frodo knew anything of the great slave-worked fields away south in this wide realm, beyond the fumes of the Mountain by the dark sad waters of Lake Nurnen; nor of the great roads that ran away east and south to tributary lands, from which the soldiers of the Tower brought long waggon-trains of goods and booty and fresh slaves.



It's interesting to speculate who these slaves were. Were they in fact people of Harad and Rhun given in tribute to the Dark Lord in order to remain in his good graces, or were they separate people, perhaps good Men unwilling to bow down to the Easterlings and Haradrim, but being militarily inferior or too few to resist?

We probably can't generalize and conclude that this is how it was with all Orcs (or Dwarves, for that matter). I can't imagine the same situation for Orcs of the Misty Mountains, for example, or who they could have traded with in that region, so they must have produced their own food, such as it was.


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## HLGStrider (Sep 14, 2008)

It all comes down to Cannibalism for Orcs. Can you breed as fast as you need to feed?


No substantiation whatsoever for this claim. . .


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## Ithrynluin (Sep 14, 2008)

I wouldn't put cannibalism past them in specific situations, but still I think much more likely is that they hunted whatever they could find in the mountains - goats, rabbits, birds, bats and let's not forget Gollum and his fish. I don't know how much plant food their diet included up in the mountains, again they probably made use of whatever they could find - roots, herbs; or how skilled they were at growing crops or how adept at herblore...I seem to remember the Uruk-hai using some kind of ointment on Pippin and Merry, or was that a liquid they were given to drink - a Middle-earth equivalent of Red Bull? Either way, I guess it could be based on some herbal extract.


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## Illuin (Sep 14, 2008)

> by Ithrynluin
> _I seem to remember the Uruk-hai using some kind of ointment on Pippin and Merry, or was that a liquid they were given to drink - a Middle-earth equivalent of Red Bull? Either way, I guess it could be based on some herbal extract._


 

That was called “Orc Liquor”. Some good ol’ Uruk-hai Moonshine. 



> by HLGStrider
> _It all comes down to Cannibalism for Orcs. Can you breed as fast as you need to feed?_


 



 That’s hilarious. But in reality, I think only as a last resort do Orcs eat other Orcs. Grishnákh said that Saruman’s Orcs eat Orc-flesh, and they were insulted by that idea.


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## YayGollum (Sep 14, 2008)

Extra talk on this subject can be found here ---> http://www.thetolkienforum.com/showthread.php?t=19279

I forget what my opinion was over there, but just because Dwarves and Orcs like living in caves doesn't mean that they can't have all kinds of farming and cattle-raising outside their caves. They're both militarily minded. They could defend the things out there. Not all land in and around mountains is horrible for such things. And are there not some things that could be grown and slash or raised inside of caves? Why not?


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## Alcuin (Sep 14, 2008)

Here’s a subject where I do remember citations. In _The Hobbit_, if you recall, Thorin told Bilbo that the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain traded their handiwork for foodstuffs, which they never bothered to grow for themselves. And in _Unfinished Tales_, in “The Quest for Erebor”, Gandalf was trying to convince the Dwarves to take Bilbo along with them, and in that argument he describes the Hobbits with what appears to be a Dwarvish term (of derision?), “food-growers.” 

How they survived during the First Age, before they met and could trade with the Elves, is another matter: they must have hunted or engaged in agriculture. Thorin & Co. loosed arrows against the deer they found in Mirkwood, but whether their failure to obtain a deer was incompetence or just bad luck, I cannot say. 

There seems to have been considerable traffic in the First Age between the Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost and the Noldor, so that Caranthir became quite wealthy, according to _Silmarillion_, “Return of the Noldor”. The Dwarves helped Thingol construct Menegroth, so there was considerable commerce even before the Noldor returned to Beleriand.

There isn’t much discussion about Elves growing food either, except in one instance in _HoME_ in which Tolkien describes Elves growing food (wheat?) for the preparation of _lembas_.


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## Sidhe (Sep 14, 2008)

Hmmm.. Orcwise...The amount of food you'd find in cave systems is minimal, fish would be few and far between, so you couldn't supply any sizeable population. Mushrooms need areas where plant material grows and dies and rots into the soil or dead wood, so they would also be few and far between. And mountain soil is typically abysmal at providing nutrients for plants, except hardy grasses.

I think the orcs would have been best served by going out and hunting and gathering and subsidizing there food with the odd unlucky traveller they found whilst out and about. Although in isolated areas mentioned it's hard to see how they could have provided for any sizeable numbers without a trade supply. Maybe the Orcs of the Misty Mountains traded with the Hillmen also. Or maybe as Gollum says they had external farm areas, although I've never heard of them? Didn't the East side of the mountains used to be homes to Hobbits? There was probably good farming land there. They certainly would have needed more than their caves could supply, maybe the orcs in Mirkwood supplied them with food also?


It's a good question.


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## sandery3 (Sep 14, 2008)

Thanks, this sums it up. Though depending solely on cannibalism would be impossible as it takes more energy to build up a body than is gained on eating it. I think it is highly likely that the orcs of angband for example received tribute from men of the east.


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