[autotune]

Is it not possible to grow coffee plants using vertical farming? It sound ideas like this => http://cargocollective.com/dellabosca/Vertical-Coffee-Farm are going to need to become a reality in the future if we can't stop climate change, where it can protect the plants from heavy rainfalls and allow farmers to control their growth.

[primroot]

Coffee has been traditionally grown within a forest containing both native flora as well as other productive species (cacao, banana, vanilla, etc.) that grow well under taller trees. So in a sense coffee _requires_ vertical farming, except that the vertical space is only occupied by coffee plants at one place. John Vandermeer of U. of Michigan has been studying coffee cultivation as a primary example of food forest, and has been pointing out the negative effects of full sun (and yes, full rain) intensive coffee cultivation on the resilience of the production system. I am surprised that the article does not mention these aspects of coffee.

[alceufc]

A challenge would be that coffee trees have very deep roots [1].

[1] http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/ad219e/AD219E05.htm

[yellowapple]

So we build deeper farm levels.

Even more conventional greenhouses, however, should help somewhat. I reckon the point of the parent commenter is less about the vertical nature of such farms and more about the climate controllability of such farms.