isn't vertical farming just moving land that was in the horizontal direction, into the vertical direction then creating a complication where the plants grown un

isn't vertical farming just moving land that was in the horizontal direction, into the vertical direction then creating a complication where the plants grown under the top rows need to be fed by an artificial source of light? I mean I think this is actually pretty logical because you can't place the solar panel above the top plants because then you are losing the advantage typical horizontal farming gets from being able to directly be fed by the sun, so then you have to place the solar panel next to the plant? The real question is whether this can save space, is whether you can generate more energy from a solar panel that takes up the same amount of space a plant would require if planted horizontally, than said plant could absorb from the sun directly. Plants take up much more space than one would expect because their roots branch out further than the actual circumference of the actual plant body itself. So in that way a lot of sunlight is wasted because it hits the extra area of soil the roots need but the actual plant body doesn't. Now if instead of hitting soil, it is instead hitting a solar panel then the general question is whether or not this is creating more efficient use of the sun, because even with a minor improvement in efficiency you should "theoretically" be able to save a considerable amount of space when growing at scale. Whether it will be cheaper to grow this way, probably not because with vertical farming obviously will come with a ton of logistical problems when it comes to harvesting or maintenance/construction of infrastructure. But I don't see how growing three plants vertically with a solar panel that feeds the bottom two is technically not saving space unless you need more area of solar panels sitting next to them than all 3 plants would consume had you just planted them all next to each other. In other words would you need 2 or more solar panels + the sun to feed 3 horizontal plants? If so then just plant them horizontally and let the sun do all the work.