Even so there's a complication about using Agri-Worlds for food production. Basically loading up a million tonnes of space potatoes on Agri-World Bumkin-IV onto a star ship for Hive World Altarius-III means taking a million tonnes of biomatter out of the Bumkin-IV biosphere. Eventually if this keeps up enough of the hydrocarbons and similar will be used up and the planet's ecology (and it's potential for food production to serve the Imperium of Man) will fail. Fortunately, there is a solution to this, if it is not a particularly pleasant one.
Basically at the end of every Hive City's twisting mess of a sewer system is a set of huge cisterns hundreds of meters across into which countless million bowls inevitably feed a lake of fetid yellowish brown water churned by huge machines tended by low ranking Techpriests who diligently tend to machine spirits which were not those they envisioned on their first day of training and are glad that their olfactory receptors were replaced by cybernetic systems. Every week, the sludge that settles to the bottom is dredged up by barges manned by those who often wonder if their supposedly cushy jobs in which they make more than triple what the average line worker while working less hours was actually better than the underhive from which they were recruited from and fed onto conveyor belts which lead into the hoppers of large landing craft that make a constant circuit from the water treatment plants to orbit, dropping off their foul smelling payloads onto kilometer long freighters who's interiors are full of massive silos. Once full, these ships brave the perils of the Warp, guided by the Light of the Astronomicon to systems home to Agri-Worlds. Occasionally Ork Freebootaz take these vessels in search of Imperial Plunder, when they find out what is in their holds they often wish that they had steered clear of this fight. But more often then not they arrive as intended bearing their cargo to where it's needed.
On said worlds a farmer rides along on a sturdy STC Space Rice Planter laying down this year's third harvest over an area of artificial wetland the size of Rhode Island. The machine spirits are cooperative and in another 2 hours his shift will end with his quota met and he can retire to the house sized vehicle's tiny cabin to get a meal packet, hand things over to his wife and get some sleep. In two more days they'll be back at their village complex and can see their children again, but for now the monotony of things gets to them. Then suddenly he sees something in the night's sky. What he sees is, simply put, falling stars. But that would be such a petty and dismissive way of describing the shower of radiance which fills the night sky, turning night into day. His wife sees it as well and comes up to take note of it. The priest at the local chapel has spoken of such events which come one or twice a lifetime, it means that they have been blessed by The Emperor and that the fields shall yield bumper crops. They get down on their knees and pray in thanks, but they never take their eyes off the beauty of the sight.
Satisfied that their job is done and that the dispersal units have created a reasonably diffuse spray to the world below, the captain of the Poopship tells her crew to set a course for another Hive World so they can take on more material to sustain the relentless agricultural projects of the Imperium of Man.
Zor
