Vertical farming produces the equivalent amount of food on one acre where conventional farming uses 350 acres. It requires only 5% of the water, no pesticides or synthetic fertilizers when done right of while providing high quality jobs and low food-mile produce to cities.
Conventional agriculture is overwhelmingly the greatest cause of extinctions, water degradation and decimation of indigenous food systems while brashly arguing that it feeds the world so governments continue to subsidize the living daylight out of it.
Rewilding vast swaths of farmland, letting rivers become drinkable again and taking the boot off the face of indigenous peoples while providing food and economic security to cities is glaringly the most regenerative future I can imagine.
There is a long way to go before the plastics used intensively in hydroponics are fabricated from cradle to cradle certified biomaterials but this is fully within our technical reach, we only lack the popular imagination, regulatory incentives and economic leadership.
Regenerative hydroponics should probably have its own certification system because it is so different than land based regenerative farming but on a sprawling planet the future is certainly vertical.
