Hydroponics

Colonies built off world (away from your homeworld) do not have atmospheres (with the exception of Leda in the Castor system). As a result, you will not have any fertile spots in your colony to build Farms nor will there be any food nodes available to raid or trade with. To solve this problem, your scientists developed the Hydroponics building. Hydroponics is the process of growing plants in sand, gravel, or liquid, with added nutrients but without soil. The hydroponics building produces 1 food per hour at level 1. It is very inefficient and should only be used if you cannot bring in food via trade routes from other colonies and you do not have Aeroponics researched yet. Power constraints may also be a reason, as Aeroponics uses more power.

However, since most barren planets contain high quantities of ore, this is still a viable choice when trying to generate food since the upgrades mainly require ore. In addition, this building does not need to be researched.