“At one point, New York City had 4,000 abandoned apartment buildings, property that is doing nothing. What if we convert it to growing food?”

That’s Dickson Despommier, PhD, professor of microbiology and author of the book The Vertical Farm, quoted in a story by Laura Marie in Future Human. Despommier discusses the promise that indoor vertical farming holds for addressing blind spots in our food supply chain system exposed by Covid-19. Marie writes that while indoor vertical farming hasn’t yet gone mainstream because it’s expensive, startups like Plenty are working on making it a more scalable method of growing food.

Indoor Vertical Farms Are the (Very Expensive) Future of Food