Food economy broken?

[solashira]

After running my little hull parts factory for hours, I start to ponder over the idea of producing food and med for myself, then I did some very simple calculation and was deeply disturbed by the result.
The little factory is run by 3k workers who would consume roughly 3000+ food ration and 2000+ med supply hourly. To be able to sustain the regular need, I'll have to build a mega bio factory consisting of at least 10 food factories and 20 med factories as well as lower tier material fabs they requires.
As it turns out, the total investment would out match the hull part factory itself by a huge margin, and ironically, I doubt it could even sustain itself given its size.
Then I realized that depending purely on imported food and med would only cost me around 130k - 200k credits per hour while the hull parts factory would earn me around 3m - 4m credit for less cost.
Yes I do realize that supply may not always be sufficient and the market may not be able to absorb too many hull parts. But the thing here is, given a stable economic system, why would anyone in his sane mind even consider building bio factories at all? The cost and return are so imbalanced and the universe seem to run quite well even without any food or med.

My complain is that the ration fab and med fab could really use a boost to their productivity, at least 5 times of what they are now, so that for every meat farm i would only need to build one ration fab.

[adeine]

Did they change this recently? Because that doesn't sound right.

Even for a large factory you can usually get away with one or two food/medical modules. Example station here