Vertical Farms

The New York Times ran an article today in their science section about the idea of vertical farms, which has been gaining traction lately. As I understand it, vertical farming is a strategy for creating farmland in densely populated urban areas by building agricultural spaces into skyscrapers.

I'm thrilled that some prestigious scientists are putting thought and energy into finding solutions to our food security woes rather than into designing new war toys, but this seems like a technological fix to a systemic problem, a fancy, expensive solution to a crisis of values.

Many of the small-scale organic farmers I know are not planting all of the land they have available because they can't do so in an economically feasible way. It would cost them more to plant, maintain, harvest and market the extra produce than they could make from selling it. If they can't plant additional food profitably on existing farmland, it's hard to believe than someone is going to make it all work on farmland that they have to build from scratch high above a city. This kind of enterprise would have to be highly subsidized, and if we're going to subsidize something, we might as well subsidize a common-sense endeavor like putting seeds in ground that already exists.

I've heard that Zabar's has had some success with rooftop tomato gardens in New York but they're a special case, growing a premium product to sell to an existing customer base.