What about genetically modifying plants to use less sunlight? Okay, now were talking major government intervention...
How much solar/wind/bio power could the thing produce... is is POSSIBLE to make up for it? Imagine if the world suffered environmental cataclysm (volcanic winter, nuclear exchange, giant asteroid, global warming), you get the idea: food in these things would be a lot more resilient if society could remain intact enough to continue power distribution. Which would only be true if we got a lot of food from these things.
Or consider nuclear, other 'sustainable' forms of power...
or that there are 6 billion 700 million people and a finite supply of accessible, arable land. And that modern agriculture reduces trace nutrients in the food (nitrogen-phosphorous-potassium, remember?) stuff is great, but NOT everything your supposed to get from a plant.
Like despite fundamental energy needs, could this simply be more efficient? Well, as wikipedia says, they would need to do a cost analysis... try the criticisms section for details. Seems to be what your talking about.
Its not quite morning yet... not tired. Or mabye we could replace all crop farms with solar farms and THEN go vertical;)
