Sure. Because I forgot to mention potatoes too.

Any food that is calorically dense like corn, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, rice etc, all those foods are grown most efficiently through our current horizontal farming methods. Our crop yields have increased dramatically in the most recent decades.

Have you seen the size of some of the industrial corn fields? We’re never going to put those in skyscrapers. You can do the math and see how many buildings it would take to get the same acreage and yields. There is no advantage. Only cost.

Additionally, other high calorie foods like bananas and nuts, often come from trees. As much as I love the idea of vertical forests and floating mountains (Pandora reference) the root systems of trees usually make any sort of container gardening a non-starter.

So that leaves us with nutrient rich green leafy vegetables mostly. And there’s nothing wrong with this. **I’m all for more food being produced as close to the source of consumption as possible. **

As important as sustainable farming practices are, the reduction of industrial animal production is far more impactful. Excess animal production causes a lot of waste and imbalance in our food supply chain. Not the least of which is the over production of grains for animal feed.

I’m most encouraged for our future by the work that’s taking place in cultured meat and proteins. If we can grow the proteins without the animal, that is a significant shift in food production.

Which is a great final point for another calorically dense food. Cheese and milk, those can’t be grown vertically. (yet) A dairy farm, or even almond farm if you prefer almond milk, all require significant space. And again there is no benefit for vertical orientation. You don’t want dairy animals on the 50th floor of a skyscraper.

I was just cleaning the kitchen and I thought of another calorically dense food that’s very important to humans nutritional needs.

Oil.

Olive oil, avocado oil, vegetable oil, etc. Can you grow any crops vertically that produce a significant, or even reasonable amount of oil in the space that you use?