Food transactions are invisible. Some places have no-trade policies on realm level, while we are finding very interesting deals there at region levels. We don't advertize this to their council, so it passes unnoticed to everyone but the lord.
Paisly is importing more food than it consumes currently, but it did have its stores depleted not that far back. Port Nebel is frequently depleting its warehouses, but it seeks out markets less and it seems the eastern markets to which it has access to are rather closed. Port Raviel isn't faring as good as Paisly, but it's getting there as they are multiplying imports as well. I, for one, always have like 10 active caravan missions. Port Raviel is starting to do the same. Our traders stop by every now and then with very large sums of food they purchased from lands our automatic caravans can't reach.
I don't think many realms would react as strongly as you describe to lords exporting their food, even if there is shortage within. It's hard to justify a communistic approach to food on the SMA island, and after all all realms welcome the additional gold the trade brings, even if it means their surpluses are significantly smaller.
We aren't using the black market as far as I know. Dwilight is big, there are still enough open markets to not have to rely on the black market.
I see. But food transactions are not invisible: bankers are informed when someone buys or sell food, dukes and rulers get food movement report and with a bit of math they can easily find out if a couple hundred bushels vanished. Clearly that holds only if they have some realm wide food policy and if they care. I suspected more realms had but it appears is not so.
As for the communistic approach, it's not about SMA or not, it's just about being reasonable. If Lords starve their own cities, this easily means they will sooner or later have no one defending it from monsters, as certainly one rural can't field by itself much of an army even with good trade deals. Plus usually judges are more tied with dukes than not, so it's really not hard to put lords in line if one wants to. For sure there are enough holes in the net for people to smuggle as much as they want, but I am surprised to discover it's not the exception.
