I don't think anyone is claiming that vertical farming needs to disrupt all traditional farming. Vertical farms would bring food production to urban areas, where the people are. That benefit would be lost on growing livestock fodder.
Not to say that vertical farming is cost-free; it's most definitely not. It does avoid (edit: or at least reduce) that major (hidden) cost, though.
Urban areas are valuable. People in cities have less environmental impact than people spread out. The people displaced by an urban farm don't disappear -- they either stay out of the city or go to another city.
Does it? By competing with existing urban land uses, if adopted any substantial scale it forces the existing uses to spread out over larger areas, increasing the energy costs of transportation associated with those uses, while also creating a major new demand for energy in food production which replaces some of the use of energy in food transportation.
Seems to me your are shifting around the fossil-fuel related energy use externalities, but I haven't seen any analysis showing it to be a net win even in that narrow regard.
Growing hydroponically also reduces crop loss from about 50% down to about 10-15%.
i.e., it would drive already high urban real estate prices higher, by competing with existing urban real estate uses, while not being cost effective, because increased output per square foot of land footprint would be offset by the higher cost per square foot of land footprint of urban land.
It seems like the kind of thing that makes a lot of sense in places that have very limited access to land with inexpensive shipping costs to populated areas like densely populated islands, but a lot less economic sense in most of the rest of the world.
Could bury these things under drive ways, under lawns, garages, decks, pools, etc.
Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon. -- Capt. Montgomery "Scotty" Scott