History Main / MultipurposeMonoculturedCrop

* The shmoo, from ''ComicStrip/LilAbner'', provides meat (several flavors), milk, eggs, butter, leather, wood-substitute, buttons, and toothpicks. The milk, eggs, and butter come already bottled/packaged. The shmoo takes this trope UpToEleven: not only do they provide all of the above, they are also {{Explosive Breeder}}s as well as requiring no food whatsoever (only fresh air). Plus, their "shmoosicals" are so darned entertaining to watch, they've pretty much made television, as an entertainment medium, obsolete.

* ''WesternAnimation/Ben10Omniverse'': Revonnah's Amber Ogia is this taken UpToEleven and ''beyond.'' The Revonnaganders use this fruit for food, drink, cloth, construction, and more. Its usefulness has been targeted by villains who want to use it for their own gains. It was the main ingredient in Dr. Psychobos' mind-control serum. It can be made into a fuel that could power the villains' entire invasion. Oh, and when we say "food," we mean ''all'' food on Revonnah is Amber Ogia processed, prepared, and seasoned in different ways. [[TerminallyDependentSociety Pretty much every aspect of their lives]] is fueled by the stuff in ''some'' manner. Revonnah is also the only place Amber Ogia can grow, as crops die in even perfectly recreated environments.

* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' fluff describes a crop known as [[https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Quillar quillar]], a type of Giant Space Corn that has the impressive property of being useful for about everything. It produces inexpensive sugar substitutes, carbonates into a delicious fruit soda, can be toasted as a staple food, mashes into a dish that is simultaneously the equivalent of mashed sweet potatoes ''and'' jelly, and added raw to omelettes for flavor and texture.

* In ''Literature/ACivilCampaign'', Enrique Borgos's artificially designed and created "Butter Bugs" are meant to be this. They are large bugs that live in colonies with a Queen and reproduce quickly, yet their breeding is human-controlled so they can't overrun the environment. In their stomachs they secrete 'Bug Butter', which is tasteless, sort of the consistency of tofu, and can supply all your dietary needs: you can practically live off it alone. Their excrement is also excellent fertilizer, and they can be kept at low cost since they can eat just about anything that's organic, including bark, branches, and grass. Their marketing didn't exactly take off at first, as people were turned off by their ugly appearance and thought it was pretty disgusting to eat something that was regurgitated by one until Ekaterin redesigned them to be "Beautiful Butter Bugs". Now it seems they're going to be pretty profitable.

* In Ursula K. LeGuin's novel ''Literature/TheDispossessed'', the population of the moon-world Anarres cultivate a scraggly shrub plant called Hollum to produce all their textile & paper goods, as a building material, as fuel for fires, and for basically everything they can because it is by far the most plentiful vegetation on their dry & dusty planet.

* ''Videogame/{{Rimworld}}'':

** An oft-overlooked one is lanolin, a greaselike wax that (in living sheep) coats wool fibers to help keep the animal dry in wet conditions. Humans harvest the stuff as a byproduct of processing wool into spinnable fibers, but it has a ludicrously vast array of uses on its own. Its main use is as a base for ointments and high-grade cosmetics, but it can also be used as an industrial lubricant or rustproofer, as a treatment for leather, as an ingredient in artificial tears, and as a feedstock for manufacturing Vitamin D[[subscript:3]] for use as a supplement/to fortify milk/[[EggsBreadMilkSquick to kill rats]].[[note]]Rodents have a somewhat lower tolerance for Vitamin D[[subscript:3]] than other mammals, so high-ish concentrations of the stuff can kill rats without harming other animals.[[/note]]

* The genus ''Brassica'' and in particular the species ''Brassica oleracea'' is a weird spin on this - it's very much multipurpose, but not monocultured. The single species ''B. oleracea'', a hardy wild cabbage native to the hypersaline, chalky soils of coastal Western Europe, has been bred into over 20 cultivars with wildly varying purposes, including (of course) cabbage, kale (the form most similar to the wild type), cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, brussels sprouts, and gailan (a.k.a. Chinese broccoli). The weirdest variety is probably Jersey cabbage, which is a ''tree'' (they use the wood to make walking sticks). It gets stranger, however; ''B. oleracea'' readily hybridizes with its close relatives ''B. nigra'' (black mustard) and ''B. rapa'' (which produces both rapeseed for oil and turnips). This "Triangle of U"[[note]]Named after the Korean botanist who discovered the relationship between the three species while working in Japan[[/note]] gives us dozens of leafy greens, a few stem veggies, some more root vegetables, a couple of spices, and two or three oilseeds, plus some decorative plants (some varieties of kale and cabbage are more pretty than they are edible) and the aforementioned wood.

** Drink them - as juice (the classic kid's drink), hard cider (when Johnny Appleseed went around giving out apple seeds, that was what he had in mind; hard cider was the most common alcoholic beverage in the US during the Antebellum era), calvados (a French brandy), or applejack (no, not [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic that one]] (although that's probably where her name came from), a traditionally freeze-distilled sort of brandy).

## Feed it to your animals: They eat it right up and get nice and fat for the slaughter.

** UsefulNotes/TheUnitedStates is often described as having a "corn-based economy" given how much corn is produced and how many of the above uses said corn is put to, feeding the population and supplying all sorts of other industries.

* Coconut trees to Polynesian cultures. The coconut flesh, the coconut water, the coconut cream made from cooked coconut, the fibres from the husk used for toilet paper or kindling or to make rope or clothing, the leaves to roof shelters, the leaves used as plates, the leaves used as hats, the shells used as bowls, cups, canteens, fishing floats, raft floats, to make small knives, the wood...

** Notably exploited by none other than General William Tecumseh Sherman. He had a personal vendetta against Indian raiders after nearly being a victim of caravan raid. Where previous generals had tried to wipe native Americans out outright, he merely encouraged people to hunt the bison as an industry. The resulting depopulation of bison had the same effect as his famous destruction of Southern agriculture and industry during [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar the Civil War]]: the Plains Indians could either submit to the United States or starve.

Oil from the seeds acts as suntan lotion and bug repellant\\

* In Ursula K. LeGuin's novel The Dispossessed, the population of the moon-world Anarres cultivate a scraggly shrub plant called Hollum to produce all their textile & paper goods, as a building material, as fuel for fires, and for basically everything they can because it is by far the most plentiful vegetation on their dry & dusty planet.

** Care for your body with them - they can also be used in medicine, cosmetics, and personal hygiene products. In fact, in herbal medicine, an apple tree borders on a {{Panacea}}.

* Sheep belong on this list. You can eat their meat, drink their milk, or make dairy products from their milk. You can make clothing, bed coverings, carpeting, and insulation from their wool. Or you can make parchment, shoes, clothing, and furniture from their skin. Possible by-products from slaughtering sheep include medicine, cosmetics, lotion, soap, ink, candles, fuel, glue, lubricant, gelatin, sausage casings, surgical sutures, violin strings, and tennis rackets.

* The genus ''Brassica'' and in particular the species ''Brassica oleracea'' is a weird spin on this - it's very much multipurpose, but not monocultured. The single species ''B. oleracea'', a hardy wild cabbage native to the hypersaline, chalky soils of coastal Western Europe, has been bred into over 20 cultivars with wildly varying purposes, including (of course) cabbage, kale (the form most similar to the wild type), cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, and gailan (a.k.a. Chinese broccoli). The weirdest variety is probably Jersey cabbage, which is a ''tree'' (they use the wood to make walking sticks). It gets stranger, however; ''B. oleracea'' readily hybridizes with its close relatives ''B. nigra'' (black mustard) and ''B. rapa'' (which produces both rapeseed for oil and turnips). This "Triangle of U"[[note]]Named after the Korean botanist who discovered the relationship between the three species while working in Japan[[/note]] gives us dozens of leafy greens, a few stem veggies, some more root vegetables, a couple of spices, and two or three oilseeds, plus some decorative plants (some varieties of kale and cabbage are more pretty than they are edible) and the aforementioned wood.

** Muffalos [[ObviousRulePatch used to be]] the livestock equivalent of healroot by providing milk, wool, meat, leather and caravan carrying capacity, all in one easily tamed and maintained animal that breeds relatively fast and can be found in damn near any biome. Realizing that this was a bit OP, the devs redistributed the milking and caravan utility to other farm animals like yaks and dromedaries, but even then the muffalo remains one of the best livestock choices for any colony on the Rim.

** Muffalos [[ObviousRulePatch used to be]] the livestock equivalent of healroot by providing milk, wool, meat, leather and caravan carrying capacity, all in one easily tamed and maintained animal that can breeds relatively fast and be found in damn near any biome. Realizing that this was a bit OP, the devs redistributed the milking and caravan utility to other farm animals like yaks and dromedaries, but even then the muffalo remains one of the best livestock choices for any colony on the Rim.

* ''Videogame/{{Rimworld}}:'' Healroot seems to cover just about any medical application one could think of, be it anesthesia, boosting the immune system, disinfecting and general healing. Fundamental part of any medkit and can work like a primitive one all on its own. It's suggested genetic engineering was involved in the distant past.

-->'''Ben''': So....all of this food is made from....that stuff?\\

'''Rook''': Yes, the entire meal is made of Amber Ogia. [[ExaggeratedTrope Even the table is made from the resin.]]

-->Chemicals used in genetic engineering, allowing the creation of the Robotech Masters' Henchmen Race, the Zentraedi.\\
A drug that gives virtual immortality to the Robotech Masters.\\
A catalyst critical to operation of the Robotech Masters' FTL drive.
* The B-Ms from ''Manga/BioMeatNectar'' are examples of this trope GoneHorriblyWrong.
* Genetically engineered and automatically grown Hyper Oats are the cornerstone of the [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Orwellian]] [[Literature/BraveNewWorld society]] of future Japan in ''Anime/PsychoPass'', which relies on shutting the whole populace in the cities and the fact that FutureFoodIsArtificial.
* Happened out of necessity in ''Manga/{{Toriko}}'' when Midori devastated the Human World's food infrastructure leaving people with nothing but reserves and rations: The discovery of the Billion Bird, an ExplosiveBreeder whose body parts could substitute for a number of staple crops, allowed people to eat food that could remotely pass for normal, and for some time, humanity subsisted almost entirely on Billion Birds and their derivatives. Eventually averted as Toriko and his friends imported in enough raw food from the Gourmet World to satiate everyone.

* In the ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'' series, Home Trees of Midworld provide food, shelter, and an organic security-system. Pika-pina, from Tran-ky-ky, can be made into sailcloth, paper, or rope, its nutrient-rich nodules are edible raw or cooked, and its leaves can be eaten plain, ground into flour, squeezed for juice, or dried out as bedding.

* ''Literature/TufVoyaging'': After the planet of S'uthlam overpopulates past the ability of his other food crops to feed them, Tuf finally provides "manna", a plant which grows anywhere, provides all the nutrition a human needs, and tastes different and wonderful every time. [[spoiler:It's also symbiotically bound to a fungus which irreversibly sterilizes 95% of the people who eat it, thus solving the overpopulation issue once and for all.]] He'd been escalating the multipurpose aspects over his three visits, but for religious reasons the S'uthlamese [[spoiler:tended towards hostility to anything like birth control, as well as having a tendency to react to being told things were getting better by having more children]], hence why he put in [[spoiler:the sterility aspect]] in his last move (without telling the general public, of course), the manna—not doing ''something'' to [[spoiler:curb S'uthlam's population]] would just have meant the same problem returning a few years later, and sooner or later he'd run out of ways to make significant improvements to Suthlam's food supply.

* ''WesternAnimation/Ben10Omniverse'': Revonnah's Amber Ogia is this taken UpToEleven and ''beyond.'' The Revonnaganders use this fruit for food, drink, cloth, construction, and more. Its usefulness has been targeted by villains who want to use it for their own gains. It was the main ingredient in Dr. Psychobos' mind control serum. It can be made into a fuel that could power the villains' entire invasion. Oh, and when we say "food," we mean ''all'' food on Revonnah is Amber Ogia processed, prepared, and seasoned in different ways. [[TerminallyDependentSociety Pretty much every aspect of their lives]] is fueled by the stuff in ''some'' manner. Revonnah is also the only place Amber Ogia can grow, as crops die in even perfectly recreated environments.

*** Of course, there's a big difference between ''industrial'' hemp and the drug kind, with the industrial variety being cultivated for rope, fuel, etc. and having 90% less THC than the drug type. Again, this is specifically invoked.

* The miracle tree [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moringa_oleifera (Moringa oleifera)]] is an awesome example of this. Originally from Southeast Asia, they are now used in many subtropical parts of the world to help combat malnutrition. Immature green pods of the tree are said to have a kind of green bean with a hint of asparagus taste, its seeds are roasted like peas or nuts, the flowers taste like mushrooms, and the roots can be shaved into a horseradish-like condiment.
** According to [[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/12/19/111219fa_fact_bilger?currentPage=all/ this]] article: Moringas are among the world’s most nutritious plants. Their leaves can be eaten raw, cooked, or ground into baby formula. They contain four times the calcium of milk, three times the potassium of bananas, four times the Vitamin A of carrots, seven times the Vitamin C of oranges, and about half again the protein of soybeans. The seeds can be pressed for an unsaturated fat like olive oil or crushed into a powder that purifies water(!): its electrolytes attract impurities and precipitate them out of the fluid. Best of all, Moringas are fast-growing and extremely drought-tolerant.
** More details on [[http://www.uu.se/en/research/news/article/?id=3080&area=2,5,10,16&typ=artikel&lang=en Moringa seeds purifying water.]]

* The genus ''Brassica'' and in particular the species ''Brassica oleracea'' is a weird spin on this. The single species ''B. oleracea'', a hardy wild cabbage native to the hypersaline, chalky soils of coastal Western Europe, has been bred into over 20 cultivars with wildly varying purposes, including (of course) cabbage, kale (the form most similar to the wild type), cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, and gailan (a.k.a. Chinese broccoli). The weirdest variety is probably Jersey cabbage, which is a ''tree'' (they use the wood to make walking sticks). It gets stranger, however; ''B. oleracea'' readily hybridizes with its close relatives ''B. nigra'' (black mustard) and ''B. rapa'' (which produces both rapeseed for oil and turnips). This "Triangle of U"[[note]]Named after the Korean botanist who discovered the relationship between the three species while working in Japan[[/note]] gives us dozens of leafy greens, a few stem veggies, some more root vegetables, a couple of spices, and two or three oilseeds, plus some decorative plants (some varieties of kale and cabbage are more pretty than they are edible) and the aforementioned wood.

It's common for WorldBuilding writers to HandWave the agricultural practices of their fictional planet, LostWorld or fantasy culture. When mentioned at all, often this topic will [[LawOfConservationOfDetail be minimized]] by letting virtually ''all'' of an invented society's needs be met by just one or two domestic crops, or a single kind of livestock. If a plant's roots can be eaten half a dozen ways, its stems burned for fuel, its leaves converted into textiles ''and'' its sap brewed into alcohol, it's this trope. Likewise, if the dominant livestock is an easily-reared ExplosiveBreeder that (conveniently) supplies all the dietary needs of a population on its own.

There is at least some TruthInTelevision to this, but it's somewhat {{Downplayed|Trope}} in RealLife. Quite a few plants and animals actually do have a lot of possible uses, but many of them are primarily raised for just one or two, and it's extremely rare for a society to be solely dependent a single crop/livestock for almost everything. Sometimes it's an InvokedTrope: if something is easy enough to raise on a large scale, it makes sense to try and find as many ways to use it as you can.

The agricultural equivalent of GreenRocks and WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer. If this particular crop/livestock's production is the foundation for an entire culture, it can help define a PlanetOfHats or OneProductPlanet, possibly resulting in a TerminallyDependentSociety. May be an indication of current or [[LostTechnology Lost]] OrganicTechnology within the setting. SoylentSoy may be an example, if derived from a single crop species rather than blending two or more.

* The shmoo, from ''ComicStrip/LilAbner'', provides meat (several flavors), milk, eggs, butter, leather, wood-substitute, buttons and toothpicks. The milk, eggs and butter come already bottled/packaged. The shmoo takes this trope UpToEleven: not only do they provide all of the above, they are also {{Explosive Breeder}}s as well as requiring no food whatsoever (only fresh air). Plus, their "shmoosicals" are so darned entertaining to watch, they've pretty much made television, as an entertainment medium, obsolete.

* In the ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'' series, Home Trees of Midworld provide food, shelter, and an organic security-system. Pika-pina, from Tran-ky-ky, can be made into sailcloth, paper or rope, its nutrient-rich nodules are edible raw or cooked, and its leaves can be eaten plain, ground into flour, squeezed for juice or dried out as bedding.

* In ''Literature/ACivilCampaign'', Enrique Borgos's artificially designed and created "Butter Bugs" are meant to be this. They are large bugs that live in colonies with a Queen and reproduce quickly, yet their breeding is human-controlled so they can't overrun the environment. In their stomachs they secrete 'Bug Butter', which is tasteless, sort of the consistency of tofu, and can supply all your dietary needs: you can practically live off it alone. Their excrement is also excellent fertilizer, and they can be kept at low cost since they can eat just about anything that's organic, including bark, branches and grass. Their marketing didn't exactly take off at first, as people were turned off by their ugly appearance and thought it was pretty disgusting to eat something that was regurgitated by one, until Ekaterin redesigned them to be "Beautiful Butter Bugs". Now it seems they're going to be pretty profitable.

* Radishes in ''Series/FraggleRock''. For Fraggles it's their main food source. Doozers use it as building material (which is why Fraggles find it delicious, although they don't know about it). Gorgs, who grow it in the first place, use it for anti-vanishing cream, which keeps them from fading away to nothing.

* ''Series/UnbreakableKimmySchmidt'': One of the real life examples is referenced. Jacqueline complains that her Native American parents were dumb for teaching her to use the whole buffalo. "Some parts just aren't good, guys! For example: the poop." Her parents point out that they never told her to use the poop. It should be noted that buffalo-hunting tribes ''did'' use the dung for various purposes.

* ''WesternAnimation/Ben10Omniverse'': Revonnah's Amber Ogia is this taken UpToEleven and ''beyond.'' The Revonnaganders use this fruit for food, drink, cloth, construction and more. Its usefulness has been targeted by villains who want to use it for their own gains. It was the main ingredient in Dr. Psychobos' mind control serum. It can be made into a fuel that could power the villains' entire invasion. Oh, and when we say "food," we mean ''all'' food on Revonnah is Amber Ogia processed, prepared, and seasoned in different ways. [[TerminallyDependentSociety Pretty much every aspect of their lives]] is fueled by the stuff in ''some'' manner. Revonnah is also the only place Amber Ogia can grow, as crops die in even perfectly recreated environments.

## Wear it: Either by weaving/braiding strips of husks (hats, shoes, handbags and more can be made this way) or by manufacturing textile fibers from material extracted from the plant.

** In another part of the world, that is what the Chinese are doing right now: For every single part of a pig there is at least one Chinese dish out there using it.

** Pigs' pancreas was a common pharmacological source for insulin, before biotechnology gave us other methods of producing it.

* Hemp can be used for food (the seeds), medicine (against aczema and inflammation), as rope (to the point of being synonymous), for fabric for clothing, sacks and sails, as building material, as jewelry, it can be made into paper and plastic, and it can be used for fuel, weed control and water purification. [[TheStoner And yes, it has that other use too.]]

** Then again, it's rare to encounter a culture that actually uses it for all these uses and has no other crops. In that light only corn can really count.

** Care for your body with them - they can also be used in medicine, cosmetics and personal hygiene products. In fact, in herbal medicine, an apple tree borders on a {{Panacea}}.

** And the best thing is: Apples, which originated from the mountains of Central Asia, grow on slopes and relatively bad lands and when you leave enough space between them you can let animals (pigs for instance) graze between them. With the right mix of types you can pick the first apples in July or August and the last ones in November and store some of them until the next season - there is a reason why in some contexts "apple" just meant generic fruit of any kind.

* Sheep belong on this list. You can eat their meat, drink their milk or make dairy products from their milk. You can make clothing, bed coverings, carpeting and insulation from their wool. Or you can make parchment, shoes, clothing and furniture from their skin. Possible by-products from slaughtering sheep include medicine, cosmetics, lotion, soap, ink, candles, fuel, glue, lubricant, gelatin, sausage casings, surgical sutures, violin strings and tennis rackets.
** Ram's horns can also be made into bows, powder horns or musical horns.

** Eggs which have a number of uses all on their own.

* ''Linum usitatissimum'', literally, "the most useful flax". Seeds: cure skin inflammation, soothe stomach ulcers, snack on them (on their own, or add them to bread), make oil for salads, moisturisers, hair conditioners, soaps, paint [[note]]traditional oil paint is made from linseed oil and lead oxides - DontTryThisAtHome, because it's difficult to do right and easy to burn yourself[[/note]] and paint-like products, linoleum (it's in the name). Feed animals with the leftovers. Stems: aside from fashionable fabrics and yarns, you can use all the broken off bits for particle boards, paper or to stuff into holes in the walls. Also has pretty flowers for your garden (there are decorative varieties of flax, too).

* ''WesternAnimation/Ben10Omniverse'': Revonnah's Amber Ogia is this taken UpToEleven and ''beyond.'' The Revonnaganders use this fruit for food, drink, cloth, construction and more. Its usefulness has been targeted by villains who want to use it for their own gains. It was the main ingredient in Dr. Psychobos' mind control serum. It can be made into a fuel that could power the villains' entire invasion. Oh, and when we say "food," we mean ''all'' food on Revonnah is Amber Ogia processed, prepared, and seasoned in different ways. [[TerminallyDependentSociety Pretty much every aspect of their lives]] is fueled by the stuff in ''some'' manner.

* ''Literature/TufVoyaging'': After the planet of Suthlam overpopulates past the ability of his other food crops to feed them, Tuf finally provides "manna", a plant which grows anywhere, provides all the nutrition a human needs, and tastes different and wonderful every time. It also irreversibly sterilizes 95% of the people who eat it, thus solving the overpopulation issue once and for all. He'd been escalating the multipurpose aspects over his three visits, but for cultural reasons the Suthlamese tended towards hostility to anything like birth control, as well as having a tendency to react to being told things were getting better by having more children, hence why he put in the sterility aspect in his last move (without telling the general public, of course), the manna -- not doing ''something'' to curb Suthlam's population would just have meant the same problem returning a few years later, and sooner or later he'd run out of ways to make significant improvements to Suthlam's food supply.

* In Ursula K. LeGuin's novel The Dispossessed, the population of the moon-world Annares cultivate a scraggly shrub plant called Hollum to produce all their textile & paper goods, as a building material, as fuel for fires, and for basically everything they can because it is by far the most plentiful vegetation on their dry & dusty planet.

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]
* ''{{Anime/Robotech}}'' has the Invid Flower of Life. Scientific discoveries derived from this plant triggered the protoculture wars, as the Robotech Masters seek to control its secrets, the Invid go on a genocidal Roaring Rampage Of Revenge in response, and Earth is caught in the middle. Among the products produced from it:
--> Chemicals used in genetic engineering, allowing the creation of the Robotech Masters' Henchmen Race, the Zentraedi.
--> A drug that gives virtual immortality to the Robotech Masters.
--> A catalyst critical to operation of the Robotech Masters' FTL drive.

[[folder: Comics ]]
* The shmoo, from ''ComicStrip/LilAbner'', provides meat (several flavors), milk, eggs, butter, leather, wood-substitute, buttons and toothpicks. The milk, eggs and butter come already bottled/packaged.
** The shmoo takes this trope UpToEleven. Not only do they provide all of the above, they are also {{Explosive Breeder}}s as well as requiring no food whatsoever (only fresh air). Plus, their "shmoosicals" are so darned entertaining to watch, they've pretty much made television, as an entertainment medium, obsolete.

[[folder: Film Animation ]]

[[folder: Film Live Action]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}''

--> Grows super-fast
--> The fruit is delicious, and the rinds can be dried into cups
--> Excellent tubers
--> Leaves make a good spice
--> Inner fibers can be spun into clothes
--> Oil from the seeds acts as suntan lotion and bug repellant
--> The crop attracts a whole ecosystem of pleasing animals

* In ''Literature/TheLorax'', the Once-ler uses the tufts from the Lorax's truffula trees to make all-purpose consumer products known as thneeds. Subverted in that the truffula trees aren't being cultivated, just harvested from the wild until there's none left.
--> It's a shirt, it's a sock, it's a glove, it's a hat
--> And it has other uses, far beyond that
** The original book also makes an off-hand mention that Thneeds can be used for ''soup'', complete with an absurd illustration of a Thneed in a bowl with a spoon sticking out of it.

* ''Literature/TufVoyaging'': After the planet of Suthlam overpopulates past the ability of his other food crops to feed them, Tuf finally provides 'manna', a plant which grows anywhere, provides all the nutrition a human needs, and tastes different and wonderful every time. It also irreversibly sterilizes 95% of the people who eat it, thus solving the overpopulation issue once and for all.
** He'd been escalating the multipurpose aspects over his three visits, but for cultural reasons the Suthlamese tended towards hostility to anything like birth control, as well as having a tendency to react to being told things were getting better by having more children, hence why he put in the sterility aspect in his last move (without telling the general public, of course), the manna -- not doing ''something'' to curb Suthlam's population would just have meant the same problem returning a few years later, and sooner or later he'd run out of ways to make significant improvements to Suthlam's food supply.

* In Creator/RALafferty's short story "Dorg", a cartoonist dreams up a large rock-eating edible animal to amuse an increasingly-famished planet. Then an actual dorg turns up, evidently ''because'' he'd concocted it.

[[folder: Live-Action TV ]]

[[folder: Music ]]

[[folder: {{Radio}}]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]
* The 1st Edition ''[[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Dungeon Master's Guide]]'' recommended that [=DMs=] incorporate some made-up variety of vegetation or prey into their campaign worlds, that can generate lots of easy food and thus make the abundance of big predatory monsters a bit less implausible.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'': Many inhabitants of the Imperium of Man subsist on grox, an aggressive breed of reptile which has replaced cattle, along with whatever it is soylens viridiens is made of. (Grox in the good years, algae in the not-so-good years, in the bad years... [[HumanResources don't ask]].)

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* The ''VideoGame/{{Avernum}}'' series, like the ''D&D'' example above, resorts to fungi of some sort or another to satisfy countless needs in the deep cavern realm of Avernum. Most varieties were purposely magically engineered for different uses by the first exiles thrown down into Avernum to die.
** There are also the giant cave lizards, kept for meat and leather as well as (bad-tempered) draft animals.

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

### You can even eat the silk! (One episode of ''Series/IronChef Japan'' had Sakai deep-frying it to make an edible decoration for his dish--to the confusion and then delight of the tasters.)

** UsefulNotes/TheUnitedStates is often described as having a "corn based economy" given how much corn is produced and how many of the above uses said corn is put to, feeding the population and supplying all sorts of other industries.

* The genus ''Brassica'' and in particular the species ''Brassica oleracea'' is a weird spin on this. The single species ''B. oleracea'', a hardy wild cabbage native to the hypersaline, chalky soils of coastal Western Europe, has been bred into over 20 cultivars with wildly varying purposes, including (of course) cabbage, kale (the form most similar to the wild type), cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, and gailan (aka Chinese broccoli). The weirdest variety is probably Jersey cabbage, which is a ''tree'' (they use the wood to make walking sticks). It gets stranger, however; ''B. oleracea'' readily hybridizes with its close relatives ''B. nigra'' (black mustard) and ''B. rapa'' (which produces both rapeseed for oil and turnips). This "Triangle of U"[[note]]Named after the Korean botanist who discovered the relationship between the three species while working in Japan[[/note]] gives us dozens of leafy greens, a few stem veggies, some more root vegetables, a couple of spices, and two or three oilseeds, plus some decorative plants (some varieties of kale and cabbage are more pretty than they are edible) and the aforementioned wood.

### As ground corn: In grits and its friends (polenta, pap, nshima, congee...), in cornbread, in fritters, in awful junk foods (Fritos! Cheetos!), as tortillas, as tortilla chips, in your breakfast cereal (cornflakes!), in the delicious batter on your awful corndog...

*** As jam - natural enzymes in the apple even help with preservation.

* The genus ''Brassica'' and in particular the species ''Brassica oleracea'' is a weird spin on this. The single species ''B. oleracea'', a hardy wild cabbage native to the hypersaline, chalky soils of coastal Western Europe, has been bred into over 20 cultivars with wildly varying purposes, including (of course) cabbage, kale (the form most similar to the wild type), cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, and gailan (aka Chinese broccoli). The weirdest variety is probably Jersey cabbage, which is a ''tree'' (they use the wood to make walking sticks). It gets stranger, however; ''B. oleracea'' readily hybridizes with its close relatives ''B. nigra'' (black mustard) and ''B. rapa'' (which produces both rapeseed for oil and turnips). This "Triangle of U"[[note]]Named after the Korean botanist who discovered the relationship between the three species while working in Japan[[/note]] gives us dozens of leafy greens, a couple of spices, and two or three oilseeds, plus some decorative plants (some varieties of kale and cabbage are more pretty than they are edible) and the aforementioned wood.

* Many inhabitants of the [[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} Imperium of Man]] subsist on grox, an aggressive breed of reptile which has replaced cattle, along with whatever it is soylens viridiens is made of. (Grox in the good years, algae in the not-so-good years, in the bad years... [[HumanResources don't ask]].)