Moisture farm

Moisture farms were often found on dry planets such as Tatooine or Ord Mantell, where the arid climate made water a scarce commodity.

Most moisture farms were owned and operated by single families, spread over a range of several square kilometers. To function effectively, moisture vaporators had to be spread a minimum distance apart to collect water; two hundred and fifty meters was a guide on Tatooine to allow each GX-8 on the Lars homestead to collect about one and a half liters of water a day, although farms in drier areas closer to the Dune Sea required a spacing of about five hundred meters.

Moisture farms were risky businesses to operate. Even a small water loss could mean the difference between surviving for another season or descending into bankruptcy. Moisture farmers maintained vaporators to gather water for themselves as well as to sell to others. They also used the gathered moisture to irrigate crops such as vegetables in underground hydroponic labs, sheltered from the hot sun (or suns, as is the case in the binary star system of Tatoo).

Cliegg Lars maintained a moisture farm on Tatooine, where he lived with his son Owen and his second wife Shmi. Owen and his wife Beru later inherited the farm, and raised Luke Skywalker there. Another moisture farmer was Orin Bold.

Text and facts from the “Moisture farm/Legends” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.