For one, the yields are smaller, but more importantly, the plants grow a whole lot taller.

The future of farming is looking up—literally, and in more ways than one: There are grow towers, rooftops, and industry talk of Waterworld-style “plant factories” in futuristic floating cities. And this vertical movement is happening for a variety of reasons. For one, by prioritizing localized operations, it offers a remedy to the mounting economic difficulties that independent farmers face when otherwise so easily underpriced by Big Ag. But more importantly, it’s rising out of environmental concerns—space, soil health, climate change, vital ecosystems decimated by monoculture. According to the professor of environmental health sciences Dickson Despommier in his article “The Vertical Farm: Reducing the Impact of Agriculture on Ecosystem Function and Services,” we should expect over the next 50 years for the human population to reach 8.6 billion, requiring an additional growing area “roughly the size of Brazil.”

When I returned home to Wyoming from the cotton fields of Lubbock, I happened upon Nate Storey’s farming operation, Bright Agrotech, in the outskirts of Laramie—a city in the high plains, 7,200 feet above sea level, with long, frigid winters often extending through May, frequently sustaining temperatures (way) below zero. The average growing season can be as short as 51 days. To battle the cold, Bright Agrotech operates in a 2,000-square-foot greenhouse, offering community-supported agriculture (CSA) by producing veggies (herbs and greens year-round, squash and root crops in the summer) for community shareholders. The greenhouse shelters 300 of Bright Agrotech’s patented ZipGrow towers (which they also sell for residential and commercial use), each reaching up to five feet; the company also custom-makes towers up to 17 feet.

In effect, the crops grow upward, maximizing the limited space within the climate-controlled walls of the greenhouse. The crops are fertilized and irrigated by deep-blue tanks of living tilapia, swimming around just out of sight. The fish tanks are rigged into part of a system that uses principles of hydroponics and aquaculture: one, the practice of using mineral-nutrient solutions in water for soil-less growing, and the other, the practice of using aquatic-life byproduct to fertilize. The waste of the tilapia is broken down, absorbed by the plants for food, and then the water is recirculated through the crops. The result? Bright Agrotech uses only 60 gallons of water a day, or about 22,000 a year (which, if you compare to water use in the average American household—400 gallons a day for a family of four—isn’t bad.) Plus a conventionally grown plot of that size would require 20 times that amount annually, according to Storey, and traditional commercial ag loses half of its water to evaporation, run-off, and flood irrigation.