Did the infestation spread across those fields, or did it start in multiple fields?
Hi Xaviien,
Yes, the infestations on all occasions were spontaneous across all T or P fields.
The T tomato bugs first hit all 3 tomato fields at once before I upgraded to a 4 T field layout which they have again hit on other years.
Same with the P potato fields, attacked all fields at once - no field was ever left untouched.
This has been happening every game year since Year 2, with alternative produce attacked each year and occasionally both crops in the same year.
It hasn’t been a big problem for me as I tend to over produce in case of a major wipeout and I do react instantly with all resources to any attack - otherwise I could have easily lost the fields completely each year to the bugs.
It would be interesting to hear from the developers how the infestation is spawned in…
From the experience of roo it seems likely that the attack will hit a specific crop first (like tomatoes for example) and manifest across all those fields in the entire base. Maybe crossing over to other crops if not dealt with quickly enough?
Do gaps between fields actually have any effect in stopping the spread?
Whenever I get the alert that an infestation is happening, I always pause the game so I can get an idea of how to deal with it. I then send every single colonist to help with it, not just the farmers. Even by acting quickly, I always lose a ton of crops though 
There are two factors at play here. Roo rightly mentions the infestation spawning in multiple sections, but the gap prevents it spreading to multiple sections after the infestation has spawned.
This has been confirmed by the devs in Discord, and you can see above that Rene has confirmed this by reacting to my comment explaining this.
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Xaviien got it figured out 
Hi Deputy_Dawg,
Yes the gaps stop the infestation spreading beyond each individual plot, but that doesn’t help those crops affected 
So it may be better just to have 1 or 2 large paddocks centralized to more easily deal with the bugs, as you are still going to lose a sizeable amount of crop either way.
It would have been nice if separating the one crop by larger distances had solved the problem, or bordering with herbs - which is what you do in a real vegetable garden.
Looks like I’m going to use a much simpler garden layout next time, which is a pity as I liked the challenge of designing more complex systems.
Lies!
Either it does jump across gaps intentionally, or there is a bug 
In this very simple test, it jumped 1 tile gap, but did not jump a 2 tile gap. This is obviously not conclusive proof that a 2 tile gap is sufficient, however it does conclusively prove that a 1 tile gap is not!
This is in “Dangerous” mode, in case that makes a difference.
Special thanks to Aiydee from Discord for the testing suggestion.
Edit:
Can confirm the plants can jump the gap on the right, but can not jump the gap on the left which is half a tile wider.
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