Fresh water

A commodity found on the F8 markets screen (if you have installed SW Economy OXZ).

Traded in TCs & stored in the Cargo Hold for trade.

It is sold on all agricultural worlds irrespective of size, GDP or TL.

It is dirt cheap in agricultural worlds, and more expensive in industrial worlds.

   Water is an abundant material in our known Universe. Water/ice can exist in such unexpected places as the polar regions of our Moon and Mercury, so there can’t be a shortage of water in our fictional Ooniverses, right?
   Ironically (and sadly) there are too many places with a deficiency of fresh water on our blue and green Earth. It seems reasonable that water will be deficient on remote space objects, such as orbital stations. On the other hand, water is cheap if you have an agricultural planet with plenty of water. Distillation and bottling are not very expensive and you have no need for a high TL to do it. So fresh water can be a valuable export product in addition to other agricultural goods. Industrial systems with harsh living conditions will have a demand for fresh water.
   Cheap fresh water in my economy is similar to cheap food in the vanilla economy – you can trade it for an initial profit when you are too poor to trade in more expensive goods. And you can take some cheap fresh water to eject in battle, fooling the pirates until you have enough cash to purchase fuel injectors.

Links

• SW Economy - for more details of trading in medicine
• Economics