Urban Farms 40 Times More Productive than Open Fields - solution to our incessantly useless land politics?

The following facts are obvious to even some of the most intellectually challenged people on /r/india :

  1. If you want to get more people prosperous, you have to industrialise away from the low return on investment agricultural sector.
  2. In most parts of India, the average land holding used for agriculture is either downright uneconomical, or at the verge of becoming so because of its small size. In my part of India, the reduction of intake by the Army has taken one of the traditional ways for farming families to survive out of the equation (send younger sons to the Army).
  3. Due to improper use of fertilisers, unsustainable farming practices, climate change, etc. the northern bread basket states are facing an undiscussed crisis of land salinisation and desertification. India's irrigation supply of water is on the downward give path as Himalayan glaciers begin to run out in the next 50-100 years.
  4. India's youth are both its greatest demographic asset and its greatest demographic liability. Close to 90% of the educated youth are unemployable because of extremely poor quality of education and absence of sufficient industry.
  5. The biggest beneficiaries of farm subsidies in India (like is true in all countries) are the big farmers who are often active in politics. Organisations like IAC and other political actors are either blissfully unaware of who they are supporting, or don't care because of political reasons.

Could indoor farming at this scale be the solution to our food ills? The methods are highly efficient (in some cases using 1% of the water used otherwise). Needless to add, the dread hand of the bureaucracy needs to be kept as far away from this as possible. This is too important to be allowed to fail because of the Indian misgovernance system.

/r/india Thread Link - eburbanist.com