while the setting offers a hint with amarrian wheat, i sort of wondered what food other races have in high regard, so i made a list and accept advises:
corn,
spelt,
rye,
emmer,
sorghun,
barley,
rice,
soy,
lentils,
chick peas,
beans,
those are some base field plants colonies either had one or two of or would likely fail.
Given the grittiness of the Eve universe and the casual loss of life with all the ships that are destroyed I would assume biomass/soylent is a semi-common source of protein. Not certain if it would be held in high regard thoughâŚ
It also makes you wonder what cultural issues this raises as well. Would people be concerned about the source of this protein?
It seems fish is pretty common within the Caldari State. Itâs farmed and transported to your plate near instantaneously, which also highlights in-game mechanics for travel and transport.
https://community.eveonline.com/backstory/chronicles/jita-4-4-1/
I think itâs probably safe to assume that collecting bodies of people slain in space battles would likely be an inefficient expenditure of energy. Not that thatâs seen in the game mechanics, but that would amount to an insane amount of energy used for little gain. If energy is really as cheap as it seems to be in game, then maybe itâs worth it, but if energy is that cheap there are probably food production methods that have a higher return that would also benefit from all that energy.
From a strictly lore standpoint, it wouldnât need to be the result of space battles. Just the context of the lore itself and how worthless human life is, reclaiming meat does sound plausible. The lore sounds like human life only matters if someone can profit politically from pretending it does. Capsuleers wipe out billions of lives per day in the course of PVE, but Sansha comes along and grabs a couple million and itâs a travesty.
@OP, keep in mind, in the English language âcornâ used to just mean âedible grain.â It doesnât necessarily have to mean maize. Certain things might keep the same names but be different actual things. The cavendish bananas that everyone means when they say âbananaâ were a rarity in the west 60 years ago, and the ones that were consumed at that time (I think they were called something like âgood boysâ) are nearly extinct now.
Consider that they not only have fission, but fusion and antimatter nuclear power as well. Once you achieve fusion you gain the ability to transmute matter into the elements you need. They also have such an abundance of energy that they can store it as antimatter for later use in transportation or other needs. So sure, soylent green is possible, but it seems unlikely given how cheap energy seems to be, generally, in game and the energy technologies they use. This implies to me that other food production methods, being more efficient, should be available that would render reprocessing human bodies into protein paste unnecessary if not uneconomical.
Then again, there are things in the game and lore in Eve that donât make much sense in terms of their technology and energy production, but are necessary for game play.
Well considering the case of Quafe+, if people found out about it they would have raised a ruckus for being fed corpse juice.
Also answers the question about corpse retrieval, yes, it is a business.
As for the topic itself, it can be assumed most of the basic foodstuffs we have today also exists in New Eden - sugar at least has been mentioned by name in the item Starcakes.
I never said it wasnât a business, I question if itâd be viable for food production purposes. There are lots of things that are businesses but wouldnât scale if they were ramped up so demand exceeds possible production. One could argue that supplying corpses for reprocessing might be why faction warfare is tolerated by the four empires and Concord, I suppose.
Who says theyâre only collected from space? Iâm betting lots of people accidentally fall asleep in JitaâŚ
While true, it avoids answering why, in the face of obviously abundant energy, is it even necessary to collect bodies for reprocessing.
Biomass.
Capsuleers have a very bad habit of treating their bodies as disposable. They also have this insane demand to be up and kicking again by the end of the day. That means that they need a sizeable stock of blank clones ready for incoming infomorph data, at all times.
What are clones made of? Biomass.
Oh sure, sidestep the issue. 
Yes, having sufficient biomass for capsuleer clones would be pressing concern. It doesnât necessarily translate into processing corpses into protein paste for dietary consumption though.
Pointing out that the corpses might not entirely be used just for food.
As for turning them into food, wellâŚitâs just Quafe being a bunch of shady bastards who are thinking, sure, why not just use THAT to cut cost and meet demand? Someoneâs selling the corpses for prices that are very agreeable and has taken steps to ensure a steady supply, Quafe doesnât need to pay extra cost to import biomass from lifestock or whatever from the gravity wells and Quafe wants materials now and cheaply. Quafe also doesnât give a damn. Biomass is biomass no matter the source.
Typical corporate bullshittery, basically.
In space, the source of biomass that isnât going to be charged by planetary export taxes will be corpses and excrement. Since thereâs entire civiliationsâ worth of people out in space, and they die pretty frequently, thatâs a very massive source.
If a body is in a space station, youâre going to collect it to move it out of the way. From there you can either jettison it out the airlock (possibly cluttering up the space lanes) or you can sell it to the highest bidder.
For bodies in space, theyâd probably get picked up by salvagers as part of picking up wreckage. Again you can either jettison them or hold onto them and sell them to the highest bidder.
Either way you have bodies getting picked up and given the kind of universe Eve is, almost certainly having them sold on the open market. Given that a human body is a convenient source of protein without needing any reprocessing the idea of people selling âdiscount porkâ, becomes extremely likely. Of course conversion into biomass for clone stock, or Quafe, is also probably common as well.
I know Eve makes it seem like it would be easy to find and retrieve corpses in space, but I donât think reality would bear that out. Neither would a corpse flash freeze upon exposure to space. In any case, once the body has cooled to the temperature of the MWBR it will be hard to pick up with thermal sensors, and the human body is remarkably transparent to most radar frequencies.
So, unless you knew the trajectory of the corpse, itâs speed and how long itâs been out there, youâll have a hard time finding it.
I disagree with your premise here. You seem to assume, as a given, that cannibalism would be extremely likely. But you only justify it by saying that selling corpses on the open market is common in Eve. This doesnât necessarily follow.
Again, when you have cheep and abundant energy, evidenced by the fact that they produce a lot of antimatter for various technologies, thereâs no reason to seek out corpses specifically for food production.
This assumes that 1) there is no additional tax beyond planetary taxes that might be applied to such sources of biomass, 2) corpses and excrement are the only sources of biomass in space.
First off, I think that the tax angle, though valid, might be a little weak. If there is infrastructure to be supported in space there will either be a tax for everyone to pay, or user fees for those who actually use the goods or services. Since weâre talking about a space based civilization, I donât think youâll get away from either of those. Unless you donât care that your space station that you call home has nobody maintaining and repairing it, whoâll demand fair compensation for their time.
A space based civilization would likely have space set aside for agriculture. This would be an important source of biomass and would avoid having to lift biomass out of gravity wells, or at least reduce the amount needed to be imported into space. It would also reduce the amount of planetary taxes this civilization would have to pay to support this importation of biomass.
I believe this whole âspace corpseâ thing is just opportunism in action. Dude salvage spaceship graveyards, find lots of corpses, harvest and sell them. Quafe is buying.
This I accept.
Again, CORPORATIONS. Profit margins at all cost. If corporations can cut off one part of the cost, they take it.
Second, notice that there arenât all that many agriculture pods floating around in space. You really only seem to encounter them in mission sites and deadspace complexes and they are too small to meet the needs of entire space-borne civilisation. What little they do have is supplementary.
In space itself, in order to save space, they wouldnât be raising livestock out there. Itâs going to be mostly vegs and tubers, especially potatoes and beans. If anyone wants meat, the cheapest solution is going to be flavoured protein paste. So, to get lots of protein paste for the cheap (and legal), they will need to process potatoes and beans (and excrement. All of those need to end up somewhere). So much trouble.
Now compare to some bloke with a vast collection of corpses just dropping them corpse in the corporation hangar and asking for a very fair price. If someone thinks that they can shave off a couple percent by using corpses someone is selling to them on the cheap to make these pastes, they take it.
Corporations have no morals, only balance sheets.
I never see planetside, or see shipments of agricultural products either. So if the food primarily comes from planets or itâs grown in space is an open question at this point, unless the lore is firm on this.
Well, this again comes down to the issue of energy abundancy. If you have cheap and abundant energy then you can afford to operate spaces large enough to raise livestock, plus grow their feed as well. Space is only ever a concern if you lack a cheap and abundant source of energy or the materials to build it. Given the size and numbers of the Astrahauseâs I donât think that either are an overwhelming concern.
I think that weâve already agreed that such under the table dealings may be very possible, even if not the norm.
I would never dream of claiming otherwise. 