I'm sorely tempted to write "I told you so", since I've been skeptical of vertical farming and similar efforts in cities. On a fast read it seems the drawbacks are: cost of urban real estate, cost of energy for lighting, low nutritional content of the greens usually grown, and the premium prices charged. The study was of New York City "controlled environment agriculture" (CEA) farms, which gives me a new term for a label.
I would think some of the factors are more serious than others. Roof top farming in NYC might be susceptible to competition from other uses, like leisure and recreation I'm not clear how much cheaper and more efficient LED lights can be, but I'm hesitant to rule out further innovation. The ability and willingness of people to pay premium prices is likely growing.
In a larger sense, CEA is what farmer have been doing since the dawn of agriculture: arrtificially changing the environment for plants and animals to grow faster, better, more disease free, etc. etc. Outside the city it looks as if "precision agriculture" (PA) is the approach taken.
Will the CEA and PA sets of innovation start to merge at some point? Stay tuned.
Source: Goodman et. al. “Will the urban agricultural revolution be vertical and soilless? A case study of controlled environment agriculture in New York City.” Land Use Policy. 2019.
This piece was originally published on Anthropocene Magazine, a publication of Future Earth dedicated to creating a Human Age we actually want to live in.
