Re: Magic to aid farming in space

I agree that magic increases the urban population percentage, but I think
inundating any region with magic is extreme.  One spell already increases yields,
though others could certainly be researched.  These spells would not likely
be arcane spells, but divine spells instead.  Only druids and clerics of
agricultural gods (and maybe elven gods and other demihumans) are likely to have the
spells...and a few rangers.  Look at your percentages of 5th level people and
how many of them are clerics, and then how many of those clerics have the
proper spell, and you usually are going to come up with an insignificant increase
for food production in space...not that the occasional city doesn't have such
a thing going...I don't remember any such temples in Bral, or any
organization dedicated to improving food supply.

There are other considerations that make farming different from "groundling"
farming.  Asteroids such as Bral don't have regular rainfall, making
irrigation mandatory.  High yield crops (yield in tons/acre) would be economical just
because of shipping costs, so bananas, olives, grapes and other orchard fruits
might predominate.  Certainly, vegetables should be grown in abundance.  In
the end, however, grain needs to be imported.  It is the biggest waste of
domestic farmland because it stores easily for voyages and doesn't rot as fast,
making it the food import of choice.  Bral, with a population of 10,000, and less
than 1000 acres of arable land, still needs to import a minimum of 10 tons of
grain per day, not to mention livestock...if they want to eat meat...and grain
for any livestock they happen to keep on The Rock.  That's a tradesman
docking every day with a hold nearly full of grain (maybe a cow or a couple of pigs
on board).  The increased cost of living this entails might make housing on
Bral more expensive than Manhattan's better areas.