Skyscraper farms poised to grow globally
https://www.pressherald.com/2018/11/03/skyscraper-farms-are-about-to-go-global/n a suburb of Kyoto in Japan, surrounded by technology companies and startups, Spread Co. is preparing to open the world’s largest automated leaf-vegetable factory. It’s the company’s second vertical farm and could mark a turning point for vertical farming – bringing the cost low enough to compete with traditional farms on a large scale.
For decades, vertical farms that grow produce indoors without soil in stacked racks have been touted as a solution to rising food demand in the world’s expanding cities. The problem has always been reproducing the effect of natural rain, soil and sunshine at a cost that makes the crop competitive with traditional agriculture.
Spread is among a handful of commercial firms that claim to have cracked the problem with a mix of robotics, technology and scale.
Its new facility in Keihanna Science City, known as Japan’s Silicon Valley, will grow 30,000 heads of lettuce a day on racks under custom-designed LED lights. A sealed room protects the vegetables from pests, diseases and dirt. Temperature and humidity are optimized to speed growth of the greens, which are fed, tended and harvested by robots.
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and every time I see him, I think of his daughter now too... wow. 
(he turned 82 this year... yikes!)
But it wouldn't change the reason why this might be necessary. And here's my argument: When those billions of lives are dependent on an alternate means of production rather than a traditional means, who is going to be profiting on these new sorts of developments? Those billions (including you and I) are not. And when push comes to shove, after a problem turns up in our new system of production which limits it's output? Who is going to be eating then? Not you and I, but the folks who can afford it.
Same thing with clean air and water. We might discover a way to make clean air out of old Chevys and clean water out of old Fords. We might be able to provide for everyone for a while, but when that human designed system begins failing and push comes to shove, it won't be you and I breathing that clean air and drinking that clean water. It will be those who made it impossible to dig a well on our newly uninhabitable land.
No, it starts with changing how we use what we have to equitably benefit a sustainable population. We've got to stop messing in our nest because it's the only one we have. I don't have much hope that we shall be able to so because it just doesn't pencil out for those driving the bus. And right now we've missed the last stop and well on the road to nowhere, IMO.
