The Farmer Rebellions were the first true test of the High Clerist's power over the growing Coalition. The growing numbers of every species was causing many problems. The rich and middle classes in developed regions of the Coalition's planets were getting fat, while the poor who lived in slums, small villages, and tribal communities far away from civilization were being starved.
The High Clerist, at this time Da'il, set about to change all this. Battling a political war through both the Lower and High Conclaves, the Clerist was able to get a law passed in which several planets in backwater systems, namely Lysia and Lyrem, were to be made into massive farming warrens. It allocated trillions of monetary units, at that time called Kujinams, to transforming entire planets into plantations thousands of kilometers long. Huge advances were made in agriculture, and the sparsely populated worlds suddenly sprang up massive cities and huge populations.
The Conclaves then bought the food for incredibly meager sums and redistributed it among it's relief agencies. The farmers wanted the government to pay fair market value or allow the farms to sell their goods to competitors.
The Conclaves would have none of it. The farmers would have none of that. They rebelled and shut down their farms. They captured supply ships and cargo freighters loaded with food and detained them. The Conclaves and the High Clerist sent in one fleet to destroy the rebels or force them to surrender and return to work. At that time, only three fleets were in the employ of the Coalition. The fleet's troops killed hundreds of protesters, and the rest returned to work with the promise that the Conclaves would pay more for the food.
That promise was never fulfilled, but the people's morale and will was crushed and they were unwilling to risk another uprising.