Food
A commodity found on the F8 markets screen.
Simple organic products. Not per-se edible by humans but it usually is.
Rumour has it, that Soylent green is made of people, which is of course ridiculous.
Everyone knows people wear clothes.
Traded in TCs (Tonne Cannisters) & stored in the Cargo Hold for trade.
Dirt cheap on agricultural worlds, and (relatively) much expensive at industrial worlds: an inexpensive product.
Cim's analysis
Cim: Let's assume a 1TC barrel of Food contains 1000kg of food, or approx 500 person-days of food. A Boa will bring 125TC, and lets say 2 or 3 arrive each day carrying food rather than other goods. So they're only importing enough food to feed a couple of hundred thousand people at most. We can probably pretty safely assume then that the Food cargo is generally luxury food, interstellar delicacies, and the like, and all planets are usually self-sufficient for basic food needs. The NPC bulk haulers (eg HammerHead) could raise it to a couple of million people, perhaps, which is still negligible.
- Cim (2012). Note that arguments exist over the definition of a TC: weight or volume?
- There is rather more discussion in Stranger's Essay on Trade and Economics
Death by Chocolate
I'm still proud of my confirmed killing of a pirate Sidewinder with a 1 tonne cannister of Food and a dab of WFI (WitchFuel injection) during a hot furball when my military laser cooked! At the time, I was chasing an FdL, but my forward military laser was redlined. I had a half-dozen other pirates crawling over my iron ass and the Sidewinder just came up from beneath me. I was actually trying to toggle the ECM but hit the 'D' button instead. Next thing I saw was "Food Ejected" followed by "Bounty: 22 Cr" and my credit rating incremented by 22.1 Cr. I like to think that the container was filled with chocolate cake so I can say that the pilot suffered 'Death by Chocolate'... Captain Hesperus (2009)
New Cargoes OXP
New Cargoes is an OXP which allows trade specifically in such items as tree grubs, goat soup and edible moths.
The major legal specific variants of the food commodity are
- Bananas: The ancient Terran delicacy can only be made to grow on a few of the colonies, and is much prized by gourmets.
- Edible Grubs: While most worlds have some sort of strictly edible grub, most are bland and tasteless. A few, like those of Ermaso, have an astonishing range of flavours.
- Edible Moth: The rare edible moth is subject to stringent export controls to preserve its numbers. While an acquired taste, it is immensely popular with the discerning eater.
- Fish meat: The difficulties in trading in fish are not the taste or interplanetary toxicity, which to the rich diner are mere trifles to be circumvented, but the need to transport it quickly before it rots. The meats of Inera and Zasoceat are particularly desired.
- Goat Meat: As the Aronar Deadly Goat shows, there is a significant trade-off between being able to kill the animal at all, and leaving it sufficiently intact that its meat is salvageable. Preparing the meat generally requires special tools.
- Goat Soup: A popular avian delicacy, this is often made from extra-planetary goat meat for added variety.
- Shrew meat: Finding a way to make shrew meat edible is a major challenge. Only a few systems have so far succeeded, and their produce is in high demand at the fashionable restaurants. Trade in Shrew products is generally forbidden on Rodent worlds.
- Tree Grubs: While no more naturally interesting in flavour than their edible counterparts, a tree grub will soak up chemicals from the wood it feeds on, and so makes excellent seasoning if dried and ground.
- Wolf meat: A particular speciality of Leriteanese cuisine, now gaining in popularity across the charts. Leritean itself has no wolves, and so the meat has to be imported at great expense.
- Edible Arthropoid: Creatures like the Vezadian Edible Aroid, while strictly edible, are generally highly toxic to most species unless properly cooked. This makes them a highly exclusive meal.
Illegal variants include Edible Poets and Edible Arts Graduates
Links
- Cooking in space (2011)
