There's no reason it couldn't be a closed system, where any fertilizer that doesn't become part of the crop biomass is recycled. In theory it should be more sustainable than existing agriculture and use less fertilizer per kg of crop produced.

Runoff from a facility like this would be, in theory, easier to manage since it would be a concetrated source. A pipe of nutrient-rich water rather than a dozen contaminated streams and ponds. That also makes it feasible to recycle a lot of those nutrients, something that isn't practical in a field.

I mean, an urban environment flushes tons of fertilizer down the drain every day...

Where I am from, farmland is cheap because of restrictions that prevent development or building on the land to preserve the areas ability to produce food.

But this doesn't prevent the building of greenhouses, since it's considered agriculture.

This results in many hundreds of acres of perfectly fine agricultural land being dug up and covered in gravel and concrete to build greenhouses.

It would be the same for vertical farms I imagine.

you forgot to mention energy use. we have to simulate the sun and that aint cheap.

To be fair anything that is:

“backed by an international team of scientists”

Requires:

“temperature, light and humidity controlled”

And:

“the culmination of 200 research trials”

Is probably a bit sensationalist.

Two words my friend: robot ~~bees~~ toothbrushes

We're talking 4 million pounds of produce. LOL, that's such a wild number it cannot be possible.

https://www.gardensofeden.org/04%20Crop%20Yield%20Verification.htm

They’re great thoughts though I’d like to point out that most human made structures do no make use of the sun and so their complaint about having solar panels take up the same space is somewhat dubious.

The other comment I’d make is that they chose to highlight an experiment utilizing wheat. Mostly because we use a lot of it. However, humans could modify their diets to consume less wheat if we wanted to. There is nothing mandatory about consuming wheat and so we could focus on plants that need less light to grow.

I’d also like to note that the vertical farming stuff has very little innovation going on in the space because there is no demand for it at all currently. If there were demand, you may see alternative technologies taken up.

Alternative technologies like using mirrors to harvest the UV light and transport it without electrical costs and losses in reproducing it. Or mutating the plants in some ways. Or making better use of UV light by only targeting the leaves or such. Plenty could be done to innovate.

That all being said, I think vertical farming has absolutely no future. Mostly because the alternatives are so good. We could redo an entire farming setup. Or we could cut down on food waste. And cut down on meat consumption. And invest in lab grown meats. Lab grown meats that have a large potential to turn food waste into usable food. All of those are far better tech and this is a dead end concept I’m afraid.

Solar over normal farmland used for hand/robot-picked plants that like a certain amount of shade is also an option. I'm curious how many acres of solar you'd need to support one acre of this scale of vertical farming.

your intuition about insolation is correct, but plants are largely not sunlight limited, rather they are nutrient limited. a vertical farm increases soil density and is also an engineered greenhouse.also in this case the light is from grow lights, so can be powered by say, wind, or nuclear.

some plants are light energy limited but these are often not major crops.

Artificial lighting exists.

Vertical farming can make sense. Effectively you capture energy from places or sources unsuitable for farming, and focus it into a small area optimised for farming.

E.g. farming on the side of a building doesn't make sense. Covering the sides in solar panels however is fine. Wind can't grow crops directly. Wind powered grow lights can.

Read the article - it's indoors.