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According to this, urban farming seems surprisingly viable due to yields being so much higher than big ag farming. If we grew on rooftops and replaced parking lots with growing space, a city could theoretically become food self sufficient.
Completely agree. It's extremely viable and should be pursued more. There's enough vacant land, especially city-owned land, for it to totally work. And you are right about yields, but with a caveat. The issue is the lack of people with the skills and experience in actual production farming - where high yields and high quality are the focus. What happens all to often is that people get enthusiastic, make a big investment, then there's nobody to carry it through multiple years and through the inevitable trial and error that occurs in any new growing situation. It doesn't help when people massively undervalue the skill required and essentially call farmers morons, as we've seen here. That means often (a) they are not willing to invest in people with the skills and pay them adequately; (b) they assume high production farming is easy and they can do it but then bail when the fail. I personally have been involved in or know of probably a dozen urban farming projects that have failed. It's sad to see.