History Main / AgriWorld

One problem with many portrayals of this trope is the one-sided flow of matter from an Agri World to other planets. On Earth, the population centers are still located on the same planet on the farms, and matter in food is ultimately returned to the planet and circulated around by the atmosphere and hydrosphere. When farms and population centers are on different planets, matter (whether it's raw sewage, fertilizer, or something else) would need to be transported back to the farms to avoid them [[GaiasLament becoming barren]].

* ''VideoGame/EscapeVelocity Nova'': The Polaris have one of these in the form of [[PunctuationShaker Tre'ar]] Helonis, although it's actually a RingWorldPlanet built by [[{{Precursors}} Those Who Came Before]]. The flavor text states that although the Polaris have only settled 3% of Tre'ar Helonis's surface area, that's enough to grow enough food to feed the entire Polaris population in the galaxy.

SubTrope of OneProductPlanet. Compare IndustrialWorld.

* As part of their extreme methods, the [[AllianceOfAlternates Council of Reeds]] from ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' have conquered multiple worlds and converted them entirely into farmlands to solve ''all'' hunger wherever else they reach.

* The first ''ComicStrip/DanDare'' story involved manned expeditions to Venus in hopes of turning it into one of these to feed an overcrowded Earth.

* The invaders from ''Film/TeenagersFromOuterSpace'' want to turn Earth into one for breeding their livestock of giant lobsters.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/TheFoundationTrilogy'':
** During the time between "Literature/ThePsychohistorians" and "Literature/TheGeneralFoundation", the Imperial Capital of Trantor is a CityPlanet that requires the combined output of 20 agricultural worlds to feed its population of 40 billion people. Ironically, between the events of "Literature/TheGeneralFoundation" and "Literature/TheMule", Trantor is sacked. After the Galactic Empire's fall cuts off its supply lines and it ceases to be the center of the galaxy, it starts to turn into a purely agrarian society, except for the Imperial Library [[spoiler:where the Second Foundation is ruling the First Foundation from behind the scenes]].
** "Literature/TheGeneralFoundation": Sergeant Mori Luk comes from the Pleiades sector, which has multiple agricultural planets. The only escape from a life of farming is to join the military.

* In ''Literature/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress'', Luna, a penal colony, is dangerously close to food riots because they aren't replacing the matter they're forced to export to Earth, in the form of crops. This knowledge incites the Moon to rebel, kicking off the plot.

* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/TheStarsLikeDust'' one character laments that the worlds of the "Nebular Kingdoms" (which in the backstory were conquered by the Tyrannian Empire several generations ago) are doomed to become these. Normally, newly-colonized worlds progress naturally from farming simply to feed themselves, to farming (and mining) for export to more advanced planets in exchange for industrial products, to developing budding industrial civilizations of their own, to eventually becoming advanced industrialized planets that import food and raw materials from less developed planets while investing in their farming and mining economies (thus aiding in the future development of those planets). But the Tyranni, as conquerors, have stymied this natural progression for their own reasons, and even after the Tyranni inevitably become soft and lazy and are overthrown, "we will still all be agricultural worlds with no industrial or scientific heritage to speak of".

* Agricultural worlds in the ''VideoGame/{{Elite}}'' franchise buy machines and luxuries and produce food and textiles. Notably the player starts in orbit of an agricultural dictatorship called Lave.
** The default starting point in ''Frontier: Elite II'' is a moon in the Ross 154 system whose primary industry is fishing. According to the manual, the player was a worker in a fish processing plant before inheriting a spaceship from their grandfather.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'' Classic, planets with specific characteristics could have large portions of their economies devoted to agriculture.
* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'', the TropeNamer, has [[https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Agri-World quite a few]], being host to a huge empire spanning a million worlds. These aren't just limited to conventional fields and pastures: some grow algae or fungi as crops, and others rear livestock such as gigantic sea creatures or swarms of flying insects. Their biggest customers are the [[CityPlanet hive worlds]], which are massive planet-spanning cities that would make the entire population of [[Franchise/StarWars Coruscant]] weep. Their importance in the Imperium's supply chain means they're also potential targets of attack. Sondheim, one Agri-World, was subjected to a planet-spanning battle between [[EvilVersusEvil Tyranids and Chaos daemons]] that ended up consuming the planet.

** The world of Telos (and the Jedi Agricultural Corps) is the breadbasket for the Jedi. Force Sensitives who had enough talent to be picked up by the Order but were not fit for Jedi for one reason or another (failing their trials, lack of Force power, disciplinary issues) are [[ReassignedToAntarctica permanently assigned into Service Corps]] and given a one way ticket to Telos and worlds like them to "seed the planet with farmers and laborers." While official Jedi documents describe Agricorps as valued contributors to the Order, the actual ''treatment'' and attitudes of "warrior class" Jedi towards their Service Corps "brothers" is CondescendingCompassion at best and contempt at worst.

* Creator/RogerZelazny mentions a world like this in passing in ''Isle of the Dead'' when he talks about the narrator's human nemesis Mike Shandon. He had been a "farm boy from the breadbasket world Wava". Apparently he had SmallTownBoredom and escaped to more urbanized planets as soon as he could, where he became a ConMan.

The solution is to have a planet dedicated to the production of food and other naturally occurring commodities, a purely agricultural world. Or, as the TropeNamer ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' kindly shortened it, Agri World. An Agri World can be a SingleBiomePlanet, but in some cases, it seems more likely that the author just described the place as a food production planet and PlanetVille is in effect.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'': In "2001", the team visits a planet of farmland that supplies the Aschen homeworld, who turned a gas giant in the system into a second sun and mounted the planet's Stargate on a swivel so grain could be dumped through it more easily. [[spoiler:It also turns out they depopulated the planet--which had developed independently to a roughly 1920s-era level of industrialization before the Aschen showed up--by giving the original inhabitants medicine that caused sterility.]]
* 'Series/TheOrville'': Despite replicator technology existing, it's apparently impractical for large scale use. Lamarr was from a hardscrabble farming colony where people were too focused on surviving and growing crops to want to deal with a mouthy kid with a high engineering aptitude. As a result, he deliberately hid his intelligence and the habit continued for years until Commander Grayson discovered it and refused to let Lamarr continue underperforming.

* ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'': Agria, as the name suggests, is devoted chiefly to agriculture.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''Comicbook/LegionOfSuperheroes'': Winath, the home planet of Lightning Lad and his siblings, is one of these, described in one comic as "a lush agricultural world". In the post-Zero Hour storyline where various [[TheFederation United Planets]] members are seceding to the new Affiliated Planets, the loss of Winath is seen as a particular blow since it's "the breadbasket of the UP".

** The world of Telos (and the Jedi Agricultural Corps) is the breadbasket for the Jedi. Force Sensitives who had enough talent to be picked up by the Order but were not fit for Jedi for one reason or another (failing their trials, lack of Force power, disciplinary issues) are [[ReassignedToAntarctica permanently assigned into Service Corps]] given a one way ticket to Telos and worlds like them to "seed the planet with farmers and laborers." While official Jedi documents describe Angicorps as valued contributors, the actual ''treatment'' and attitudes of "warrior class" Jedi towards their Service Corps "brothers" is CondescendingCompassion at best and contempt at worst.

* ''StarWars/Legends'' has thousands of these worlds, mostly scattered on the Outer and Mid Rim to supply the City Words at the Galactic Core like Coruscant. This is a source of ongoing tension between the regions, as the under represented and less wealthy farming worlds often get neglected by the politically connected, even though the wealthy Core Worlds depend on the farmers to eat.

* ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy'': The planet Ukio is primarily an exporter of foodstuffs, and Thrawn takes it over at the start of the third book to [[spoiler:feed his ever-growing army of clones]]. Many, many other such worlds exist in the ''Franchise/StarWars'' galaxy.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'': In "2001", the team visits a planet of farmland that supplies the Aschen homeworld, who turned a gas giant in the system into a second sun and mounted the planet's Stargate on a swivel so grain could be dumped through it more easily. [[spoiler:It also turns out they depopulated the planet--which had developed independently to a roughly 1920s-era level of industrialization before the Aschen showed up) by giving the original inhabitants medicine that caused sterility.]]

* ''Series/StargateSG1'': In "2001", the team visits a planet of farmland that supplies the Aschen homeworld, who turned a gas giant in the system into a second sun and mounted the planet's Stargate on a swivel so grain could be dumped through it more easily. [[spoiler:It also turns out they depopulated the planet by giving the original inhabitants medicine that caused sterility.]]

* On a terrestrial scale, any part of the world that's known as a "breadbasket" or (in East/Southeast Asia) a "rice bowl". The local economy in such places is dominated by agriculture, and most open, arable land is devoted to fields, pastures, and paddies. Present-day examples include the American Midwest and Canadian prairie, the California Central Valley, the Hungarian Plain, Ukraine, the Punjab, Sichuan, and the Mekong Delta, while historical examples include Sicily and North Africa for AncientRome, Egypt for...pretty much every empire that controlled it (particularly the Roman Empire, the UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire and the various Muslim empires that succeeded them), and Ireland for the United Kingdom (which had disastrous consequences for the Irish people during the [[UsefulNotes/IrishPotatoFamine Great Famine]]). In coastal communities, fisheries often have the same effect on the local economy; within the US, for example, New England, the Gulf Coast, and Alaska are all famous for production of fish, crab, shrimp, lobster, and other seafood.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'', the TropeNamer, has [[https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Agri-World quite a few]], being host to a huge empire spanning billions of worlds. These aren't just limited to conventional fields and pastures: some grow algae or fungi as crops, and others rear livestock such as gigantic sea creatures or swarms of flying insects. Their biggest customers are the [[CityPlanet hive worlds]], which are massive planet-spanning cities that would make the entire population of [[Franchise/StarWars Coruscant]] weep. Their importance in the Imperium's supply chain means they're also potential targets of attack. Sondheim, one Agri-World, was subjected to a planet-spanning battle between [[EvilVersusEvil Tyranids and Chaos daemons]] that ended up consuming the planet.

* As part of their extreme methods, the [[AllianceOfAlternates Council of Reeds]] from ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' have conquered multiple worlds and converted them entirely into farmlands to solve ''all'' hunger wherever else they reach.

The solution is to have a planet dedicated to the production of food and other naturally-occurring commodities, a purely agricultural world. Or, as the TropeNamer ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' kindly shortened it, Agri World. An Agri World can be a SingleBiomePlanet, but in some cases it seems more likely that the author just described the place as a food production planet and PlanetVille is in effect.

One problem with many portrayals of this trope is the one-sided flow of matter from an Agri World to other planets. On Earth, the population centers are still located on the same planet on the farms, and matter in food is ultimately returned to the planet and circulated around by the atmosphere and hydrosphere. When farms and population centers are on different planets, matter (whether it's raw sewage, fertilizer or something else) would need to be transported back to the farms to avoid them [[GaiasLament becoming barren]].

* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'': An early episode deconstructs this trope. Sykar was forcibly remade into a farm world by the Peacekeepers; the native plantlife was almost completely destroyed to make way for vast fields of Tannot root, and the planet's natives were reduced to all being farm laborers, planting, tending and harvesting the crops. Thanks to the high demand for Tannot root, the farms themselves are steadily being worn out through overharvesting and reduced to barren wastes; the one seen in the episode is said to be the last fertile region of the planet. For good measure, the only thing stopping the Sykarans from noticing any of this is the fact that their food is made entirely of mind-control drugs, and they all believe that ''every day'' is the last day before a weekend.

** Aya, from ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'', is one-third this. The other two thirds are "volcanic wastes" and "''really'' cramped city". Most of the farming is done nearer the volcanoes, with all the difficulty that comes from it, both in terms of space and lava. The angara don't have a lot of luxury in this regard, given the other worlds they've got available are "hideously overgrown jungle" and "giant ball of ice".

* ''LetsPlay/{{Mahu}}'': In "Second Chance" the Galactic Commonwealth houses a number of specialized worlds, a few of which are incredibly-fertile paradises which produce enough food to feed billions without issue.

With vast galactic empires, it doesn't seem all that likely that every world would be like Earth, which can and does produce enough food in its own right for its entire population. Some planets, after enough ''Film/BladeRunner''-esque urban decay and [[TabletopGame/Warhammer40000 Hive World-esque]] urbanization, end up becoming little more than [[CityPlanet immense planet-spanning complexes]] which, without the necessary AppliedPhlebotinum or artificial gardens, would simply not provide enough food to keep their inhabitants from dying of thirst and hunger.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'', the TropeNamer, has [[https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Agri-World quite a few]], being host to a huge empire spanning billions of worlds. These aren't just limited to conventional fields and pastures: some grow algae or fungi as crops, and others rear livestock such as gigantic sea creatures or swarms of flying insects. Their biggest customers are the [[CityPlanet hive worlds]], which are massive planet-spanning cities that would make the entire population of [[Franchise/StarWars Coruscant]] weep. And since this is ''40k'', they are also potential targets of attack. Sondheim, one Agri-World, was subjected to a planet-spanning battle between [[EvilVersusEvil Tyranids and Chaos daemons]] that ended up consuming the planet.