HOUSE OF CHARDS
The dark side of the vertical-farm boom
FOR GROWING FOOD, the sun is yesterday’s technology. Soil? As quaint as an iPod. Such are the promises of vertical farms—indoor towers stacked high with crops. Waterborne nutrients feed the plants, and LED lights drive their photosynthesis.
The idea emerged back in 2000, when Columbia University microbiologist Dickson Despommier wondered why Manhattan’s abandoned buildings couldn’t be used to grow food as efficiently as they once housed people. Free from the primitive sway of
