More technology to make rural America obsolete?

The Salt Lake Tribune reported a few days ago on a technology that permits food to be grown in vertical "gardens," thus requiring less land area.  The headline is "It grows 1,500 times the food with 5% of the water. How a Utah vertical farm combats climate change."  The story reminded me of prior stories about this and similar technologies and the possibility that they will be one more reason rural America dries up and blows away.  

That is, if we don't need wide open spaces to grow enough food to feed the United States and help feed the world, what reasons will remain for policies that support rural communities.   After seeing some of these early stories late in the first decade of the 21st century, I put a photo of a prototype of these vertical greenhouses into slides I used whenever talking about reasons I was hearing that rural America was becoming obsolete. 

Some of those earlier stories are here, here, here, here, here (from 1967!) and here.  

Here's some more info about the technology the Tribune is reporting on, framed in relation to climate change and the burden of extreme climate events on farmers and ranchers.  The leading quote is from Steve Lindsley, president of Grōv Technologies, a sustainable agriculture startup based in Vineyard, Utah, population 12,543, part of the Provo-Orem Metro Area:

One of our clients is the owner of a big cattle ranch outside of Amarillo [who said], "If I can’t keep my animals healthy and safe in Texas anymore, I can’t do it anywhere.”

Whether freak winter storms or endless heat waves, climate change is forcing agriculture to evolve. As an energy and water-intensive industry and a major producer of greenhouse gasses, most climate experts agree that evolution is a necessity.

At Utah’s largest dairy farm on the west side of Utah Lake, Grōv Technologies wants to demonstrate that it is possible to feed a hungry planet and fight climate change.

“Five hundred acres of food, on a third of an acre, using 5% of the water,” explains Lindsley, “that’s the story, but it’s just the beginning.”

If you’ve seen 1999′s “The Matrix,” walking into Grōv Technologies’ Elberta, Utah facility and meeting the towers might give you deja vu. Unlike in the film, this deja vu is nothing to worry about.

The technologies behind Grōv are the twinned Olympus farms: two-story cylinders that slowly but steadily rotate squares of wheat or barley grass through a rapid growth cycle — from seed to feed in seven days.