[lathspell]

Greetings and welcome to the Downs, Hot, crispy nice Hobbit! Family of Bill Huggins I wonder?

Burra: you will never make a president I you don't stop giving such unparlementary and to-the-point answers!!

Back to the topic.
These are the answers I can give and the thoughts I have on the subject.

1: yes, the Hobbits are indeed a strange folk. They 'settled down and grew fat' because they were almost always guarded from their enemies. They, just as the Ents, didn't have enemies anymore and therefore they didn't care. Once their protection was gone, it went wrong straightaway. They had to be roused, by outsiders. I always found the rousing of Hobbits and Ents alike in a way, and the matter of Merry and Pippin doing both of them makes it stranger.

2: Elves didn't always shun the dwarves. There was at a time great trading between the two going on, and the memory of Galadriel and Celeborn are very long. Neither did the Elves always live consealed in a forest, with only spies to go out. Haldir might have been one of the few who spoke Westron still.
There are many ways in which the Elves might have heard about the dwarves' cram. Personally I would be more surprised if they hadn't heard about it.

3: orcs bread in the same way as the children of Iluvatar, as you said. No one could spawn anything except Iluvatar. Orcs are Morgoth's revenge for Iluvatar's Elves. I don't think orcs have any form of agriculture, but they do hunt and sometimes even fish. Maybe they take the fruit they can get on raiding and robberies. But I guess they mostly eat meat.

4: I guess from your remark at point three about Iluvatar that you have read the Silmarillion (if not, please do). Thus you know that the dwarves were created by Aule. And he made them strong and enduring and so that friendship should be understood greatly among them. This because it was in the time of Morgoth that he made them. How they reproduce I don't know, for the first dwarves were Seven Fathers, but I guess threads can be found about that subject.
Dwarves specialised in stone- and metalwork and most other things they needed they gained in trade. Khazad-dum traded lots of things with the surrounding lands, including the Elven Eregion. In LotR Gloin tells Frodo about the prosperity of Erebor under King Dain and their great traderoutes.
And last... dwarves were made in times of war and therefore made to endure them. They did want them to be, though ofcourse they too made mistakes in the past, just as every other species. Nevertheless they don't necessarily have to like war or fighting any more then any other species. As Gandalf says in the Unfinished Tales: 'Dwarves know better the value of good friendship than any other species.'

greetings,
lathspell