In the novels, food production falls into three main areas; Predation on other smaller settlements (both mobile and static), the internal growing of foodstuffs and trading with other towns and cities that aren't worth attacking.

He set off at a run, and soon reached Bloomsbury Park, out in the open air on the tier’s brim. It had been a proper park once, with trees and duck-ponds, but because of the recent shortage of prey it had been given over to food production and its lawns grubbed up to make way for cabbage-plots and algae-pans.

...

For ten years it [London] had eaten nothing but tiny farming towns and static settlements in those wet hills. Now, at last, the Lord Mayor had decided that the time was right to take his city back over the land-bridge into the Great Hunting Ground.

Mortal Engines

Most of the characters would be on the borderline of malnutrition if it wasn't for the prevalence of spinach and easily-grown greens

There was nothing to eat in Grimsby except what the Lost Boys stole, and the Lost Boys stole only what boys who have no one to nag them about balanced diets and no-snacks-between-meals eat. Sugary biscuits, cheap, soapy chocolate, bacon sandwiches oozing grease, thin rounds of algae bread smeared thick with garish spreads, glasses of ill-chosen wine that kicked like airship fuel. The only concession to healthy eating was a tureen of boiled spinach in the centre of the table. “I always make sure the boys bring back a bit of greenstuff,” explained Uncle, dishing up. “Helps keep the scurvy at bay.” It spattered on to Tom’s plate like something dredged from a blocked sump.

There's also some element of trading for food with other (less easily attacked) cities and settlements

>>217353874
This shit was so fucking retarded
Worse than anime

>>217353884
This wouldn't even work if you killed (and ate) the entire population of every city you consumed
But they don't, they assimilate the entire population as immigrants every time
So they get a tiny pittance of resources and a fuckton of new mouths to feed every time they run down a city

>>217353884
>food production falls into three main areas; Predation on other smaller settlements (both mobile and static), the internal growing of foodstuffs and trading with other towns and cities that aren't worth attacking.
That's only one, the food stolen or traded is not "produced".

>>217353874
This whole premises is fucking stupid if you have a rudimentary understanding of physics and mechanical engineering.

>>217353874
what' their tax policy.

Why does this concept trigger everyone's autism?

File: 1748955673162892.webm (1.35 MB, 1280x720)

1.35 MB WEBM

>>217353874
This is one of those things that is so fucking retarded I occasionally have to remind myself that it was not, in fact, a hallucination.

>>217356000
>>217354777
You guys must hate any piece of science fiction lol