Food distribution stopped working.

There's a hard cap on population equal to the planet class.  Can you try terraforming another tile to raise the class and see if your cap goes up?

Thanks, but whatever the hard caap is, I'm no where near it.  Food Distribution is supposed to, and did, raise the cap by two.  Then it stopped working.

Is this your capital planet.

No, they're colonies.  As I wrote, it was working, then stopped.  I use it as an initial boost when I first colonize.

could you post a screenshot of the colony where it is not working?  

Never mind.  Figured it out.  My error.

so it wasn't next to a city?  :)  They don't provide +2 pop cap, they provide +2 population adjacency (which is +20% pop cap for carbon cities, +0.2 flat for silicon cities).  I figured that was the misunderstanding, hence wanting a screen shot.

Yep, that was it.  But going through the process of answering your request got me to notice it, so thanks for the assist.  8^)

glad I could help, even indirectly

I spoke too soon.

It clearly isn't working.

UPDATE:  Hydroponic Farms has the same problem.

your colony capital is not a population building.  It is an All Construction building.  You are getting a 15% bonus to food production now, but 0 food is 0 food.  There are no population enhancements next to your Food Distribution.  It is working just as intended.

please note, not all buildings which provide pop cap are population enhancements.  Slaver Work Camps provide 1 pop cap, but are Social Construction.  The Food Dist won't work on that one either.

(edit) to be clear.  If you put a city next to your Food Dist, the city would take +2 adjacency from it, and your pop cap will go to 7.2 (3 from city, 3 from capital, +20% from Food Dist adjacency to your city).

Ok I will admit I'm silicon, so I'm not familiar with these buildings, but these buildings dont affect population caps, but cities do. These buildings affect how much food you have. Look at the top of  the screen on your main screen. You use food to build cities on any planet.

Willy is correct, and the silicon city will do a similar thing, but give a flat +0.2 to the pop cap instead of a +20% (which seem to make silicon cities weaker, however, silicon cities give better adjacencies than carbon cities)

OK, so exactly what do I put Food Distribution or Hydroponic Farms next to in order to achieve the increase in population cap? Do I only get the population cap increase if they're next to a city?

It's not a population cap increase but an adjacency bonus to population type improvements. If you put it adjacent to a city it will increase that city's supported population. If you put it next to a colonial hospital it will increase the hospital's growth rate.  The only way to increase the world's population cap is to build cities, or, if the cities have already raised the population cap above the world's class, to terraform additional tiles to raise the class.

There is a planetary resource which will increase pop cap as well .. it'll give a +2 cap to the planet when first mined.  But other than that, Publius is 100% correct.

The main reason for Food Distribution is to increase food production.  The +2 adjacency to cities is nice, and I will occasionally use them just for that, even if the food increase is minimal (especially when there are already 2 cities on the planet, and I'm low on food) but they are not in-and-of-themselves pop cap boosters.