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.
There's an organic produce company in Manhattan that uses vertical grow chambers and they get around the lighting problem by illuminating from the center of the cluster and rotating the plant pods occasionally.
They get around energy usage by charging a premium and taking advantage of state agricultural grants.
It's expensive but you can get city grown butter lettuce year round.
Normally that would be a bit of an heresy, but fun thing: with the good LEDs at the good frequency, you can make a solar panel + LED setup that is actually efficient enough to provide more light to the plant than it would normally receive.