Posted by: DPSniper
Well one reason why I believe they would have large amounts of colonies is this.
Why have one planet with large population mixed in with agriculture when, as in the example of Harvest, you can have major population centers, such as Reach or Earth, and another planet that does all the agricultural growth to ship it to the other planets.
Planets such as Harvest aren't meant to have large populations, but to produce for the big population centers. This also doesn't have to apply to just agriculture, but to anything. To add, most of the agriculture planets replaced manual labor with JOTUN machines. Why have 800,000,000 people on a planet to mine or farm, when you can have a million and a ton of machines to replace them? Then, you can spread that 800 mil. around on 800 colonies, and there you go.