The economics vary heavily location to location. In some areas, well designed hydroponics or aeroponics “cost less” due to density - if good lands expensive.
If land with decent soil (and keeping the soil good) is inexpensive, traditional soil based farming is superior.
Restoring or amending super overworked or “poor” soil is both expensive and time consuming.
A lot of those interesting vertical farming startups fail miserably because they are outcompeted by relatively nearby, lower cost soil based production - the whole location part of the equation simply doesn’t work.
There’s also fun questions about if you can reliably do hydro/aqua “organically” to appease the granola crowd, it turns out that soil has certain advantages if treated right such as having various fungi etc that help fight crop disease/pests etc.
If land with decent soil (and keeping the soil good) is inexpensive, traditional soil based farming is superior.
Restoring or amending super overworked or “poor” soil is both expensive and time consuming.
A lot of those interesting vertical farming startups fail miserably because they are outcompeted by relatively nearby, lower cost soil based production - the whole location part of the equation simply doesn’t work.
There’s also fun questions about if you can reliably do hydro/aqua “organically” to appease the granola crowd, it turns out that soil has certain advantages if treated right such as having various fungi etc that help fight crop disease/pests etc.