They're Way Ahead of Me

February 21, 2021

 

In “If You Can’t Beat It, Adapt” (January 23, 2020), I asked who was planning to conserve farmland, if rising sea levels forced people who lived on the coasts to move to the interior of the country, where the farmland was. It never hurts to plan ahead, I said.

Meet Vertical Farming. The modern take on vertical farming is that it’s basically tall greenhouses. As near as I can figure, the concept was introduced in 1999, and the greenhouses have been around for years; but the idea has been slow to take off—until the pandemic.

There are drawbacks of course—what if the power goes out, will vertical farming run the rural farmers out of business, who’s going to do all that pollinating… But at least somebody’s thinking about it.