SF isn't thrilled with that at all. FM doesn't mind it one bit... just that people know about it.
Why do you think their Fungal Gourmet (tm) line tastes better than the standard stock?
Here's the second-to-last of the major food producers, unless I've missed a major niche. Figure that anything else is taken care of by smaller, specialty companies, private farms, and the like. I'm only really covering companies big and rich enough to have their own asteroid bases and/or colony cylinders.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.
Why do you think their Fungal Gourmet (tm) line tastes better than the standard stock?
Here's the second-to-last of the major food producers, unless I've missed a major niche. Figure that anything else is taken care of by smaller, specialty companies, private farms, and the like. I'm only really covering companies big and rich enough to have their own asteroid bases and/or colony cylinders.
Quote:Demeter AgriculturalLocation: Several colony cylinders. One in Side 1, the others in the business Sides.Products: Wheat, rye, corn, free-range chicken/beef/pork, some fruits and veggies.Founded: 2107Likes: Space colonization (customers), Eurocorp (one of their bigger customers), the Federation government (the higher-ups in their capital like fresh food)Ambivalent Towards: Earth ('nuff said), Space Independence (they like the idea of cutting Earth out of the market, but combat? Nope.), Daikoku (different markets, some collaborative efforts (and a lot of top restaurants contracting both)Dislikes: SynthPaste, Soylens Fuscus, FungiMonkey, CCA (competition), some of the private colonies (for being self-sufficient), OmniConsumer Products (Demeter lost BILLIONS when OCP bought out New Detroit for themselves), UAC Jupiter (it's a long and expensive story)Liked By: Culturally European spacenoids (who can afford fresh food), Kubota-Deere (good customer), Degwin Zabi (the same way a shark likes swimmers- if Zeon wins, DA is up for 'nationalization', read: forced purchase by the Zabi Group)Disliked By: The competition (see 'Dislikes'), UAC Jupiter (the feud is quite mutual)Likelihood of Screwing Over Shadowrunners: Low, unless it'd hurt one of their lower-cost rivals... assuming it's a corporate contract. If it's an individual exec hiring you, all bets are off.
History: DA is, in many ways, a mirror of the Daikoku Group. Both were founded early in the UC as joint ventures, both provide quality foodstuffs to their respective cultures, and both are tightly in bed with their local manufacturing 'corps. The differences start with how they were founded. Daikoku is a creature of the business interests of Japan- it was founded by the 'corps, as a means to an end. Demeter, on the other hand, was a joint project of the European agricultural industry, created to go where the markets were- to space.
Where Daikoku had an easy time getting into space, having the resources of its parent keiretsu to draw upon, Demeter ran into a host of issues. Without industrial sponsors, getting into space was far more expensive; the first Demeter farm cylinder, its base started in 2108, ended up floating, inert, for fourteen months due to lack of funds. Construction resumed in 2110, after the original Demeter founders struck a deal with an American consortium; in return for a 50% share of the company, the American agricorps would provide funding sufficient to finish the cylinder.
Until Persephone Colony opened its doors in UC 0016, most of Side 1's population had been supported by Earth-based agriculture. Its presence was mutually beneficial; the local spacenoids got fresher food for a lower cost, and Demeter got all the business it could handle. It was a net win for the company- sure, 73% of their business came from Demeter investors back on Earth, but cutting the costly orbital lifting and transport out of the equation let the company cut prices and still make quite a bit more profit.
Where Persephone was a marginal success, Isis and Gefjun, located on more distant Sides, proved sizably more lucrative. Their sheer distance from Earth made them captive markets, without competition... until the advent of Soylens Fuscus, CCI, and the later SynthPaste. Profits dropped at that point- not from profitable to not profitable, but from massively profitable to acceptably profitable. Demeter's response was to steal a line from CCI, and turn an asteroid into a farming base. Appropriately enough, they secured the rights to Ceres.
Negotiations with UAC Jupiter... went poorly, to the tune of billions in cargo (and a small flotilla of megafreighters) lost; neither 'corp will admit to what happen, even to this day, but they went from cordial potential partners to sworn enemies. Discussion with Poseidon Helium went significantly more smoothly, and DA secured another steady stream of income.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.