Food Supply Issues during the Circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenicians under Nechos II

Herodotus gives us very little information about the circumnavigation of Africa carried out by the Phoenicians around 600 BC, but the tale about the stops made by the Phoenicians to till the land and thus obtain their own provisioning provides a valuable clue in favor of the historicity of the expedition since usually Mediterranean sailors procured provisioning in the ports they touched, but if the Phoenicians had to till the land themselves while circumnavigating Africa it means that they really went south of the equator, where in the first millennium BC the natives still did not practice agriculture and therefore had nothing to offer the Phoenicians for their livelihood.