Ladies and gentlemen, today we have observed something we like to call "natural selection", also known as "f*** around and find out" among the youngsters.
People often believe you can just plant anything in verdant areas and it'll grow, but that's a misconception. The native vegetation is consuming all the nutrients in the soil, so new crops have barely any chance of surviving since their roots are too small and weak to compete against the bigger trees that have spread their roots much further and grown thick. The native vegetation also recycles its consumed nutrients when the leaves and dry branches fall off in their vicinity, those nutrients are not going back to the soil far enough to reach the weaker plants.
You need to prepare the soil by first cutting down the existing trees and then fertilize the area, otherwise it'll just end up as we saw. Part of the reason why the village has enough food to sustain itself is because of Lerunda's powers, sure, but also because they properly opened up space by cutting down the trees that would have stolen the nutrients as well. Lerunda's powers must have just fertilized the soil unbeknownst to them.
And I'm going to bring up a point I made a few chapters ago - if those guys are so prone to violence and blame shifting, it makes me wonder if the reason they've been chased out isn't because they made it impossible to cohabitate with other tribes and got kicked out justly. If anything, the people after them seem to be victims, judging their behavior towards Lerunda and Roma.
Speaking of which, Lerunda is being too harsh on herself, she's just a 7 years old kid. You can't change the opinion of someone who's making purely emotional judgements, and you can't protect them from their own bad decisions. The only thing you can do is let them learn the hard way or let them exhaust their emotions so they're able to see reality for what it is. And I'm glad the story isn't making it lesson that Lerunda has to learn, but rather Roma by facing the consequences of his own stupidity!