Vertical farming, the best solution to support an ever growing population or just a scam?
IMHO it has a lot of potential but not being able to grow grains really is something that should be tackled sooner rather than later. But I could see this being used by self sustaining communities to provide lots of food while using very little space. And it's technically more environmentally friendly than just using vast stretches of land to produce the same amount of food.
we already produce enough food to feed the entire planet (industrial food waste seriously hampers that effort) – add in several claims that US could double food production just by breaking up factory farms and converting to family farms
one of the solarpunk short stories (forget which collection) posited a competition set up on separate islands, one group with industrial farming, one group with permaculture, one group with vertical farming – obviously for the story, the permaculture group did best (worked with what was in place and what actually grew there), industrial farming required too much input (importing expensive fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides), and vertical farming required too much technical maintenance
the technical aspect is what I see as the biggest issue – I could see vertical farming being a great solution in a sterile environment (ie. a space station or an arctic greenhouse), but in everyday practice having a stable power supply for water pumps and constant maintenance (clogging from nutrients and fertilizers, filtering hard water to prevent calcium build up, roots binding up emitters) and having to compensate for the lack of soil microbiology would all take its toll
How do you think factory farms and family farms differ?
Most farms are family owned corporations. Anything else is either stupid accounting, or Low productivity (the Amish is the most obvious example of low productivity farms that are generally not corporate)