Vertical farming startups have raised billions claiming they'll replace traditional agriculture, but the math rarely works out—my city's largest indoor farm just shut down after six years because electricity costs alone ate 40% of revenue. Soil-based farms still produce 95% of our food globally, and they do it with sunlight instead of LED arrays that need constant power. Should we keep pouring subsidies into vertical farming when regenerative soil practices could boost yields at a fraction of the energy cost? I've visited both types of operations, and the vertical ones feel like science experiments rather than scalable solutions, though I admit they might shine for leafy greens in arid regions.