The fluff describes hive worlds are requiring the imported food from multiple agri-worlds to survive, but that's not consistent with the number of worlds shown in the Calixus sector listings: there are 27 hive worlds, and only 16 agri-worlds. Should we assume that there are actually a lot more agri worlds that simply aren't listed, and that the ones that are listed are just the interesting ones, or what?

Hard to say, I can't imagine anyone's ever actually worked out the mechanics of it!

I don't know if you really need a 1:1 Hive world/agri world ratio. Even though Hive worlds have massive populations, efficient agricultural methods, especially on a planetary scale, would probably be able to feed trillions of humans.

I remember reading on the CIA world factbook website (always an uplifting read) that even though British agriculture employs less than 2% of the population, it provides 60-70% of the food for the nation. So a population of a handful of billion, with advanced agri-tech, high efficiency xeno crops and the economies of scale acheived by farming an entire planet, may be able to feed a dozen normal worlds, or a handful of hive worlds.

Yes, there'd be food shortages and food riots and the like, but these would be more a product of transport difficultuies than a lack of actual foodstuffs.

In addition to the (very valid) point Lightbringer raised, I wouldn´t expect the map to show ALL worlds of the Calixis Sector. Even while reading official "fluff text", you get more and more names that are not part of any published map.

Lightbringer said:

I always got the impression from the fluff that hive worlds needed more like a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio of hive worlds to agri worlds, at least. The Calixus Sector as published has the ratio as 1.68:1.

I think Lightbringer is right on this one, especially since the fluff on one world (I believe it's Spectoris) says that it provides food (in it's case, fish, since it's a water world) enough for several planets. an entire agri-world would, depending on the techniques used on that planet, produce easily enough food for at least a few worlds, going up to about a dozen.

I believe more than a few hive worlds are supported by Hydroponics satellites and farm moons within there home systems

unfortunately, its tough to really go by fluff produced for DH/40K. one cannot expect all bases to be covered, the scope really is just to large to be consistent.

currently on this planet, despite the persistent problems of hunger, malnutrition, reduction of arable land and fresh water, there is no shortage of food - there is a distribution problem. the 'have' nations siphoning off food from the less developed 'have not' nations. unless an adventure focuses on food shortages/riots etc. its not something i would try to find consistency in.

tackling your post directly, i would believe that even 1 agriworld (as described in the DHCR) can feed multiple hiveworlds. a whole planet utilized for the purpose of farming of one kind or another. i envision multiple crops being grown, water being siphoned, massive cultivation of various herd animals, huge fish farms etc. hive worlds do produce their own food stocks. i do believe there would be constant shortages, hence the need for bolstered food supplies from other sources. in a hive there would be areas given over to hydroponically grown foods, vat foods, engineered stocks etc. just not enough to feed the entire population consistently. the uphivers would def have these kinds of facilities in operation. the midhives would have a few areas. the down hivers... well good luck to them. i find it hard to believe that any population with the potential for isolation (warp storms, unreliable delivery) would depend solely on agriworld delivery. esp if you further consider the whole basis of the Imperium having evolved the way it has due to long periods of potential isolation. they would have adapted for that...or perished very nastily.

in favour of your argument, i don't know 'efficient' it would be however. hence the problem of distribution. the Imperium does nothing, from my perspective - efficiently. i don't see why this would be handled as such in this matter and none others. and can easily drive the ratio numbers you cite, potentially even higher...throw in some corruption, rampant ineptitude, raids, war, criminal enterprise and the Imperial bureaucracy. the Imperium further is not known for its concern for ecological and environmental factors, it exploits and despoils worlds at its leisure. what happens when an agriworld, can no longer support the Imperiums **** and ravages? its a recipe for disaster.

hmmm....it also makes for some perfect campaigning

nick012000 said:

1.68:1 doesn't sound like that bad a ratio, really... None of the Calixis HIve Worlds seem to have THAT big a population: assuming Scintilla has the largest population at 25 billion, this means that the populations density is only about 5 times that of modern Earth. Look out of the window: it's pretty easy to imagine squeezing another 4 people for every 1 out there into the space we have available on Earth. All it would mean is that most habitable spaces would be built up like inner cities on Earth now, just in a much smaller usable space. Just build more towerblocks!

Here's a quote from a website I just found:-

"To help governments with land-use planning, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has developed a system called Agro-Ecological Zoning that characterizes land's suitability for agriculture based on physical parameters like climate, soil, and topography (footnote 3). Based on current soil, terrain, and climate data, FAO estimates that more than three-quarters of Earth’s land surface is unsuitable for growing rain-fed crops (i.e., raising crops without irrigation). Most of the remainder is subject to some soil, terrain, and/or climate limitations. On average, only about 3.5 percent of Earth’s surface is suitable for agriculture without any physical constraints "

Now we feed 5 billion relatively well using 3.5% of the available space. So if EVERY space on planet earth was devoted to agriculture, and served by a couple of billion farmers, I'm sure they could probably feed (taps thoughtfully on calculator) 1.68 x 25 billion = 42 billion people quite easily...

I imagine problems would arise where you have genuinely huuuuge hive worlds with populations in the hundreds, or even thousands of billions. Such a world would probably need dozens of agri-worlds to maintain its population...

nick012000 said:

Yeah, it's because agri-worlds would most likely be specialized to grow a limited number of crops rather than being full blown gardens of eden. So for instance, one agri-world might mainly grow oranges, while another agri-world mainly grows weat, and another mainly grows apples etc. etc. If the population of a single hive world would have the slightest hope of getting all the vitamins and nutrients that the people needed they would need the products from several agri-worlds, simply because the agri-culture preformed on hive worlds are extremely minimal (the best they can do is usually growing fungus).

Varnias Tybalt said:

And that's beyond any food the Hive Worlds manufacture themselves (which will, admittedly, be recycled, processed and generally unpleasant, but it's better than nothing)

Varnias Tybalt said:

A limited type of crop, yes, but not just one crop. For one thing, continually planting the same crop on the same plot of land will rapidly deplete that land of nessesary nutreants t maintain that crop. That's why we cycle the crops grown. After one crop is harvested, a second crop that will help put back the nutreants and minerals needed by the first crop is used to help maintain the growing capacity of the fields. Beyond that, planets, even if they are One Hat Planets, still have divergent echo-systems and alterations in temperature depending on it's proximity to it's star. Because of this, there'd be a bit of verity in what is grown on various parts of the planet, each part producing what it can most effeciantly produce. From one agri-world, you can get decent verity of food stuffs.

I'd like to point out that the 40k universe runs on the Rule of Cool, not biology or math. So indeed there will be food riots. Indeed there will be heroic trader captains battling ork freeboota raiders to bring his load of corpse starch rations to a starving world. Indeed there will be decadent nobles smuggling rare voidimported, stasis-contained, xenosgrown fresh fruit from the other edge of the sector. Indeed some poor we-didn't-sign-up-for-this acolytes will have to make the decision to quarantine a key agriworld to stop the stealer infection to spread, knowing that they condemn billions to starvation.

Indeed there will be a suberbly trained and conditioned crack team of inquisitorial acolytes ferociously battling their way through the vast expanses of red tape, stamps, seals, insidious administrators, old praxises, inherited responsibilities, long forgotten archives and finally all the way to the Adeptus Administratum Sectorial headquarters. Once there they will engage the Arco-Administrator of Calixis in a battle of wills, quills, paragraphs and clever interpretations of since-milennia-forgotten imperial decrees. Eventually, their quest complete they will have succeeded to countermand the ongoing excess deliveries of high-carb Frosty Chocco-Shock Bars - Brings out the Marine in YOU! with short sell-by-dates that is directly responsible for a severe rise in Nurgle worshipping in the Atkins system.

But none of the above happens because there are 1.68 agriworlds per hive world. It all happens because it makes for a great story.

the liegekiller said:

According to most sources, hive worlds main foodsupply is the imported stuff from agri-worlds. The "bolstering" you refer to is what the hive worlds can produce themselves (like corpse starch rations and the like), but it doesn't seem to have nearly enough of what's really needed, hence the need for constant importation of food from other worlds.

the liegekiller said:

You're right, the Imperium rarey do anything as efficiently as possible. They do things as massive as possible instead and hope to cover all the problems that needs solving. Like cleaning an entire planet of life if troublesome cult activity has been spotted. The same could be said about their distribution of food from agri-worlds to hive worlds. Hive worlds can't feed themselves mainly because it's so increasingly rare for anything to grow there, so they send thousands of bulk freighter ships (probably not very efficient ones, but in sufficient numbers the lack of finesse isn't likely to be a problem) to them, non-stop with storage areas filled with food and just hope that the programs like corpse recycling prominent on most hive worlds will cover the gaps.

And lets not forget the insane amount of food getting thrown out because it getting to old. Ask any big store near you, you be surpise how must food goes to waste.

A hive world that get caught in a warp storm wil have a huge problem, and i imagin the noble who controll the military wil sit on the importent location and let the rest die and death of hunger or cannibalism. Might take a few years before there are only enogh living that can support themself on fungus and what not. But it would be a very emtyp city i bet, a places a team of acolytes might get to explore after the void storm have disapeared. To see if the nobles house stil surviving there might be worth saving or if the planets remaning residents are in need off a true purge.

I'd like to expand more on the problem of transportation and distribution. Consider the following:

A case of MREs containing 12 meals weighs about 20 lbs. (roughly 9 kg.) on average, with each meal providing around 1000 calories or so depending on the manufacturer; do note that I'm using the weights for civilian MREs, like the ones offered by SoPakCo's Sure-Pak meals or the Menu-C rations available on MREDepot.com.

Assuming three meals a day, a case can support 4 people for one day, meaning a metric ton will feed approximately 448 people for one day. To feed a hive world of 25 billion (which is the population of Scintilla), you would have to import and distribute about 56 million metric tons of MREs each day. You'd probably need a few thousand semi-trucks to move all that food around, and likely those trucks would have to be running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The spaceport required would certainly have to be awe-inspiring, especially if it also handles other cargo in addition to all that food. In short: a truly massive logistical effort just for food. Adding other essentials to the mix (like clothing) is only going to compound the problem.

By the way: do note that I'm being generous by using MREs, as such meals are designed to be reasonably light weight, fairly compact, and not prone to easy spoilage, and thus, easier to deal with. Transporting fresh foodstuffs adds the problem of timely delivery as the food must be delivered and consumed before it spoils.

-Kirov

Kirov said:

That sounds about right, considering that a Vagabond-Class merchant trader vessel has a mass of roughly 8 megatonnes, and due to the nature of such a vessel it would be safe to assume that a really large portion of it would be devoted to cavernous holds. And since the vessel itself isn't just a solid lump of eight millions tons of metal, but rather a superstructure designed to envelop large open spaces of holds, you could reasonably assume that somewhere between 1-5 Vagabond-Class merchant trader vessels could easily supply a planet like scintilla with 56 megatonnes of MRE's each day.

That being said, the Vagabond-Class is certainly not the largest transport vessel in the Imperium (it is mentioned in Rogue Trader because it is a reasonably versatile ship capable of other things than just transporting goods, even if it is best at transportation than other roles). There could very well be cruiser sized or even battleship sized bulk freighters (think of the Misericord described in Dark Heresy) hauling foodstuffs from agri-worlds to hive worlds with regular intervals, apart from the gigantic fleets of smaller trading vessels trying to make a living with the same business.

In general a hive world sees starship traffic numbering in the hundreds or even thousands of vessels each day, so considering that between 1-5 Vagabonds could feasibly supply a world like Scintilla of it's daily needed supply of food in MRE form (which probably isn't standard, but it's a good measure for numbercrunching), all numbers seem to add up unless there are further aspects needed to be included in the equation.

It is worth noting that little biomass leaves a hive world. A hive city probably mostly needs to import oxygen, and whatever extra strange nutrients/additives/etc a human body actually _destroys_ while living. As long as the human population and their fecals are generally recycled in the soylent green vats a hivecity should mostly import luxury food and complements for the starch.