I think it's reasonable to require Lords to suddenly revisit their trade arrangements when a drought (or looting) occurs. The problem with the current system is in big part that you need to take care of it constantly even when nothing particular is occurring, which becomes tedious because there is really no judgment involved. Create a system where player input is required only when something has changed and you will ensure that players will need to think about their actions before pressing the buttons, and no one will complain that that's tedious.
I don't. They'll simply not bother with selling to avoid the risks. I've seen people stockpile ridiculous amounts (and thus waste a lot) out of fear of droughts, in realms where it never will be an issue.
No one is arguing that trade should do itself. All the automation that is requested is so that trade only require one party to be actively involved in trading, instead of both parties. Back during the days of caravans, people still needed to manually send them out. But at least the lords could set an automatic offer to sell/buy all over X at Y price. Which is the main thing people are requesting.
Because, let's face it: what does food bring to this game? Not much, aside from a wealth redistribution from rural regions to city regions (leaving all other non-rural non-city region in relative poverty). A rare few exceptional realms require imports, which helps stimulate interaction, aye. But not to much if there's no sellers to interact with. Not to mention that the food precarity forces a relative peaceful diplomacy in order not to alienate too many food sources. So in the cases where food is in imbalance, it doesn't create conflict, it creates friendship. Because food is too important to go to war over, it's much more effective to befriend food sources than to risk your whole realm to scavenge a handful of bushels from an enemy.
And if food was of great importance for the logistics of the days, that's not how it is emulated in BM. Provisions emulate that for sea travel, but the amount of food that troops take in comparison to region population is so small that it could easily run in a system apart from it.
