And what is ideal population for said planet?
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So, If I say for some crazy reason decide to have a 8 planet filled with farming, and the pop max grows very large will that hurt that happyness of my planet?
And what is the "ideal population" for a 8 planet, and say a 10 planet
Oh yeah. It's pretty tough to get any planet above 20B these days. In previous versions (DL v1.2) before significant nerfage to approval buildings it was possible to achieve planets of 100B but now it's foolish to even try.
Depends on which version of the game as to what pop points are easy to hit and allow you to keep a reasonable approval level. The size of your galaxy and the number of morale resource mines you have makes a big difference as well. A decent rule of thumb in a gigantiac galaxy with about 6 morale resources is 13B for anything PQ10 to PQ7, 6B for PQ6 or less and 20B for anything PQ11+. One reason is the 10% approval bonus that PQ11+ planets get. The other is simply a matter of the number of planet tiles you have to give up for food/approval buildings. In a medium galaxy or below I'd probably hold every planet to 13B and may even consider keeping PQ10-7's at the starting limit of 6B. Generally I shoot for 2 top level farms and 2 VRC's to hit 20B but if I only get 4 or 5 morale resources I may have to go to 3 VRC's.
The above is primarily for DL although these levels aren't too far out of line for DA. DA does have the extra "cap" on morale resource mining and somewhat more severe pop approval penalties, but if you're willing to let your approval sag to the 40% level on your most populous planets then you can do 20B in DA as well (again gigantic and maybe huge galaxies only).
In TA I've limited myself to 1 farm per non-homeworld. This will give homeworlds a pop limit of 16b and all others somewhere around 14b (depends on tech tree). This way your morale's are fairly evened out and you've increased your pop a bit, w/o getting into the area of out of control.
The big difference here is that in TA, non-homeworld planets have a 8b cap and homeworlds have a 16bil cap. With that into consideration, a second farm would be getting dangerously close to needing too many morale buildings per planet to make it worth your while economically.
Oh yeah, and if you got the Thalan tech tree in TA, don't place your Hyperian building (the research/factory/farm building) on Thala...the 8 food component of that is just harsh there. Toss that on a newly colonized planet to make another 16b cap planet to emulate a second homeworld...
On the game design side, I've always wondered why planets have the special resources that increase a tiles food output by 100% to 300%. If even one farm makes things difficult, placing any kind of farm on one of these tiles would look to be all but catastrophic to a planet's morale?
galciv2 let's you make the choice to use or not those kind of tiles
it's kind of the same reason why there's anomalies with 1bc worth of coins 
as an example a PQ 24planet (quite findable in immense galaxies in TA)
with 20% PQ bonus from ability + Drath tech tree and +3PQ building + 1 from each terraform level
should be 24*1.2 +3+1+1+1 = 34 PQ planet
now if there's a food bonus tile on the planet, it could probably be used, moreso if you build your shrine of the mithrilar (+75% morale) along with a few other good morale buildings
then the planet could be used as : source of income + troops
I've found that the pop/morale problem works itself out over time, so I build a farm on those +100% and +300% bonus tiles (one per planet). It saves me from having to upgrade to the top level farm later in the game. Once the planet's morale goes to 40% or below, the pop stops building and the planet becomes stable. For lower class planets, I just stop ferrying people to them when I get to the top pop level or 20% morale.
I normally go with 2 farms per planet at or above class 8 and one per planet otherwise. Shuttling people around lets me overpopulate those lower class planets as long as I have a farm there.
I suppose "ideal" would be around 20b for a class 11+ and 16b for a class 10 or below if morale was an overriding issue. Morale only becomes an issue for me when there's an election or if it drops below 20% though. In those cases, I lower my taxes for a turn to boost it back up.
It's got to be a byproduct of the days when you could have 20b+ with ease and Stock Markets gave Morale. It's something I think that's fallen the wayside though since.
As for the AI always placing it on Thala, it's the same problem as their overuse of the Embassy...lack of planetary improvements to place. They don't have a 2nd planet in their system, so their colony ship probably won't see a planet first turn. What's the first thing you'd want to place on a planet...a factory.
Ever since I accidenlty placed it on a farm tile, I've become a convert to not place it on Thala. I got into a pattern of placing all factories on farm tiles just so I never accidently placed a farm there. Well, silly me forgot about the food component and cringed when a 300% food tile saw a +8 food building. At least the planet self-levels off by hitting 20% morale... It really made that planet my population center for troop transports though lol.
Over-crowding a 'tactical' planet (by location & nearest to an enemy core assets) has certain advantages if you can synchronize the negative effects with a steady flow of troop transports auto-launched.
Which is another good reason to take any rare 700% food tile bonus for what it's really worth - invasion potential, travelers NOT paying any taxes & actually, straight off the morale calculations from the world they left behind.
Sure, it's a sensitive aspect to be able to balance out good numbers (according to PQ, with key infra-structure choices & patterns - as stated through excellent reasonings above by everyone, etc) in order to obtain optimal empire figures & output -- but, it is another to fall into sinking death just cuz your overall Morale HAD to be kept below or above a 'steady' intuitive percentage.
To me, a quick win by any means necessary is always more satisfying than knowing i ended up with "better" final numbers through stiff & solid conditions. Those being a result of MY own decisions, btw.
Possibly why i hate mega-events, in fact.
And just think, you can drastically reduce normal events in the 2.0 beta 
I'd say to only jump in if you don't mind things possibly being buggy when you do something. If youre into playing the game just for the sole purpose to have fun, Beta's may not be your bag. Now, if you love to discover things, even if it means it's a game breaker and you cannot finish that sandbox game, then by all means...join in the fun.
Note, that doesn't mean the beta is THAT buggy. I'm just saying that only people who don't mind finding bugs, or purposely try to break the game to make bugs appear should be playing a beta of a game. There are those that during a Beta will scream on why a bug like X got in there in the first place and that the devs should be replaced by un-trained monkies.
I'm sorry to say that I liked TA back in it's beta stages more than I do in it's live form lol. Finding problems is just something I enjoy doing.
Hear that Not-MoM developers? /hint /hint
I mix and match farms and bonus tiles to get the population I want without building more than one farm. Intensive farming + 100% bonus = 20b, easy to keep decent approval with some morale resources. Advanced xeno farm + 300% bonus is the same I think, and cheap to build. In my current game I've got a planet with a pop cap of 32b, it maxes out around 29b I think. It's class 34 and has my economic capital, plus the politcal capital, Oracle of Krynn, and Order of Krynn on morale bonuses (one of those might be on an influence bonus, can't remember). It also has the Krynn temple and consulate, and rest of the tiles are stock markets.
The income and influence generated are quite spectacular 
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