Hey, I am trying to map areas such as this in India:
How shall I go about mapping individual farms? How shall I decide how to use landuse=farmland for mapping major chunks of field? How can I show paths between individual fields which can usually be only used by people on foot? The wiki page doesn’t seem very clear.
You can use landuse=farmland to map either individual farms, or if you are careful that your “more aggregated” data are correct in their full encompassment of “areas of pure farmland,” you could make larger areas (polygons, multipolygons) and tag them landuse=farmland. “Stitching together” with others around you who also map farms can be done, but there is usually some coordination of tagging strategies and practices in a given area so that things remain harmonious and easy to piece together into a larger aggregate whole. Remember, OSM is a great big shared fabric of map data, spanning the entire planet! You want your neighbors and fellow local farmers and mappers to be able to map right along with you, too, right?!
If there are orchards, use the specific tag landuse=orchard; the same for meadow (landuse= meadow). There are also barns, silos, animal breeding areas and “hothouses,” (landuse= greenhouse_horiticulture), each with specific taggings.
For the areas which are “internal to each farm” which are tagged landuse=farmyard, including a “farmhouse” where people live (who live on the land they work / farm), those can and should include the farmhouse where people live, barn, storage sheds, areas where irrigation equipment may be stored / parked, etc. A “reasonable / sensible proximity” is true about “farmyards,” like “walking distance or so.” If you have to drive a tractor or truck / jeep to connect one part of a farmyard to another, it is likely in another farmyard.
Start small with a farm or two or three, completing “one whole farm” (then another, then another) to the best of your ability. Step back and wait for / look at how these might render. Then see if it might make sense to make larger, more all-encompassing (multi)polygons which might be correctly tagged landuse=farmland. Sometimes these aggregate together nicely in an area where that sort of tagging makes a lot of sense. Sometimes it makes sense for each individual farm to be tagged with a landuse=farmland (multi)polygon, so that its farmyard (and remember, not every single landuse=farmland necessarily has a landuse=farmyard), sometimes it makes sense for these to more easily / widely be aggregated together into areas of landuse=farmland – it really depends on how farms are “stitched together” across that particular landscape. Experiment a bit for what works for you and the local landscape of farms.
Start small, go slow, watch renderings, try out a few different things in a given area, watch as things “blossom” and grow as you do this. As other mappers “stitch together” around you in similar fashion, it should be easy for these areas to blend and merge together. If they don’t, or there is difficulty doing so, back out a step or two in your process and see if some additional harmony can be struck with others who map farms around you together so it all makes sense in a wider area. This isn’t difficult to do, though it does take some time to render and interact with other local farmers / mappers. Have fun!
in addition to the above, you can also tag a place=farm with the name of the farm (if known). I’ll usually put it near a main-looking building or group of buildings
for paths, you can use one of the highway=* tags, depending on what the apparent use is (or highway=path if it’s unclear, I believe)
also, I really like mapping fences and the like around fields on a farm, really looks good on the map~
Yes, excellent to mention fences (a way tagged barrier=fence). Also is natural=tree_row which farms sometimes use to roughly delineate boundaries, this renders nicely, too.
To properly tag that a highway=path is for foot traffic only, consider highway=footway + foot=designated + possible other access=* tags to restrict traffic of certain modes (like bicycle=no, horse=no…). Especially around farms, a way tagged highway=* should include a surface=* tag (with a value like unpaved, gravel, dirt, paved…). If you use highway=track, do your best to assign an accurate tracktype=grade[1,2,3,4,5] value.
