Right now, people seem to ignore the food bonus tiles on most worlds. I think it's a shame that they're so worthless, so I've been thinking of an alternative way to use them.
Perhaps if natural population growth was slowed down, farms and food production could be used to make your population grow faster. That way, good agricultural worlds can be used for filling transports and colony ships, as the population used would return more quickly. Farms in their current form could be replaced by Habitat Zones, which increase the maximum population cap.