Vertical farming, the best solution to support an ever growing population or just a scam?
IMHO it has a lot of potential but not being able to grow grains really is something that should be tackled sooner rather than later. But I could see this being used by self sustaining communities to provide lots of food while using very little space. And it's technically more environmentally friendly than just using vast stretches of land to produce the same amount of food.
With drought being more common than ever and increasingly so, I believe vertical farming is necessary. It's much more water efficient than open fields. Also, we need more forest instead of fields to keep a sustainable biodiversity.
However, currently it's only possible for certain kinds of plants to grow in vertical farms.
Another interesting developing method is agrivoltiac farming. We're going to see more of that sooner than vertical farming.
I agree agrivoltaic farming is much more easy to implement for farmers, and although droughts and such will be more common I think the main appeal is what you said freeing up space for nature to reclaim.
Geography, geography, geography. It completely depends on where you live. Remember, climate change doesn’t just mean hot and dry. Some places will get dry, some will get wet. There will be winners and losers.