Good tactic to maintain a good food supply in Banished
I suggest you watch some Let's Plays to get started.
Here are some quick tips though:
Search for a nearby forest and build a gatherer and a forester, gatherers produce a lot of food and the foresters will make the forest denser, giving more food.
Build houses close to the jobs, it will save travel time and this enhancing production.
After you get the gatherer, build a hunters cabin, and if the size of the forest allows it, repeat step one out of the radius of the first gatherers hut collection zone. I don't know a lot about fishing, but i think a hunters cabin is better because you get leather from hunting
if you are playing on easy and medium, don't start with crops, if you get an early winter you aren't going to survive.
Take care that you never run out of tools.
I have a town of around 600 people now, doing amazing. The problem I'm having now is that my jobs are not equally spread, so some people have to walk so far they die of hunger on their way to their jobs, true dedication!
During the first years, a gatherer hut in a forest is an efficient, low-maintenance and reliable source of food. They also produce four different kinds of food (berries, onions, roots and mushrooms) which is great for food variety. Their drawback is that they require a large forest area, so supplying a large population primarily with gatherers will soon cause you to run out of space.
Hunters require forest areas like gatherers, but only generate about half as much food. You might still want to have a few hunters because they also produce leather which can be used to make clothing (the other sources of clothing material - sheep and cattle - might not be available yet). It is not required to man each hunters lodge with 3 people. A single hunter is usually enough to decimate the animals which spawn in its vicinity.
The most space-efficient food source are fishers. They only need a small building at a river or lake. Do not place them right next to each other, because this reduces their output. But you are free to use the space between them for other buildings. Fishers are also low-maintenance and reliable, but they unfortunately don't have a high yield per worker compared to other food sources.
Pastures with livestock require a large area and have a setup time of several years until the herd has grown large enough that it produces food. But they are maintenance-free (except for the annoying habit to develop infestations from time to time, requiring you to transfer the herd to a new pasture before they all die), only require a very small amount of workers and when they finally reach the maximum animal population they produce even a bit more food than farms. Pastures can also be used as an emergency food source. When you set the amount of animals per pasture to a lower amount than you currently have, all excess animals will be butchered as soon as possible. Unfortunately this throws you back quite a lot in building up a sustainable meat industry. For further reading I recommend the question "Which livestock is the most efficient food source?"
When it comes to supplying a large population, you won't get around using farms and orchards. But these are unfortunately the least reliable food source. A short summer can mean that you lose a large part of your harvest, which can lead to a famine, which is often the beginning of the end of your village. Also, farming requires a lot of workers when you want it to be low-maintenance. Technically you only need the workers in spring (for seeding) and autumn (for harvest). Farmers will automatically act as laborers during winter so they do at least something productive, but in the summer they will just poke around the fields which does absolutely nothing for crop growth.
You could, of course, assign your farmers to other jobs during summer and winter. But this is dangerous, because you risk forgetting to assign them back when it's time for field-work. That means there is an additional risk of losing a harvest because of your own negligence.
Orchards have the advantage over farms that they only need workers for harvest, not for seeding. Trees only need to be planted once and then live for several years. That's a job even a single worker can do. But orchards have a setup time of several years until the trees will start to carry fruit. Also, after a few years the first trees will die and need to be replaced by young saplings, which will reduce the food output of the orchard. Even when all trees are in the food-carrying age, the output of an orchard will be slightly less than that of a farm.
By the way: Changing type of fruit only affects the saplings being planted. Any existing trees won't get replaced. So with a bit of micro-management you can create mixed orchards with many different kinds of trees.
Bottom line: Do not put all of your eggs in one basket. A good village should make use of many different food sources. That not just improves food variety and thus overall health, it also balances risk, labor requirement and space requirement of the different food sources against each other.
But the most important thing to avoid starvation is to always have an emergency stockpile of food. Every citizen (adult, student and child) consumes about 100 units of food per year. Food does not perish, so there is no reason not to store a lot of it. Make sure that your food stockpile is at least citizens * 100 units (stockpile for one year), so you have no starvation even when you completely screw up a years harvest. Should it ever get lower, even when just for a moment, build more food sources!
Best town ive built, still working on it but it has over 50 people and its year 22. Build foresters to make dense forests and put gatherers, hunters, and herbalists next to them. Set the foresters to cut and plant that way u still get fire wood from those locations but u also have enough forest dor gathering and hunting. Clear out all rocks too cuz the forest wont grow in those areas if u dont and u want the forest as dense as possible. Place towns close to jobs and add a school for production increases. Fishing huts also help for food. Once u have a stable population of 50 to 60 u can start to add crop fields, mining, and cattle but slowly. Going too fast in this game will ruin u. Managing your population growth is extremely important. I build new houses when i have atleast 2 people of 12 to 15 years old
Certain houses will hoard food, build a market to have food distributed more evenly. Make sure your houses fall within the circle.