Actually if you look at no-till and permaculture it 100% can have the same or higher yields per acre. The process of farming also doesn't have to be mind-numbing in this case. The combination of AgTech/Robotics and no-till/permaculture could produce vastly larger yields vs Organic traditional farming.
That's for soil based farming, personally I think Hydroponics (raising plants in water with no soil), Aeroponics (Hydroponics but grown in vertical towers), and Aquaponics (closed ecosystem using fish to fertilize the water the plants are grown in) are the only real way to feed a growing population and not destroy the environment. The Netherlands is already the leading European exporter of food, here is a great youtube video that touches on some of the ideas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5clOYWsNhhk
Bottom line is that traditional Organic farming isn't the answer anymore than modern factory farming. AgTech is something I'm passionate about and I honestly believe that if we don't adopt more modern science will we face a large crisis in our food systems sooner rather than later. Some crops will need to be soil based (grains and related crops mostly) but nearly everything else grows faster, more reliably, and with out the need for chemical treatments. There are a large number of Hydroponic and Aquaponic farms already in operation but the percentage is still very small.
Aside from the no-till/permaculture stuff (which has been around for decades now, and has never seemed to take off), what you are talking about is ultra-automated, extremely centralized farming - and in general, I kinda agree that it's a part of the future.
One issue is just that if you're trying to convert solar energy into calories, you naturally want to spread out over a large area (a field) then use an efficient process to do this (photosynthesis). You then want to make these calories easy to process with machines (monoculture), and to defend them against pests (sprayers), etc. So there are advantages for traditional farming that are rooted in simple physics and economics, and a lot of that won't go away.
I do think the use of robots to apply pesticides in a more targeted manner is probably something we'll see more and more of, but I think for most crops, building a super-controlled green house is probably never going to be economical.
That's for soil based farming, personally I think Hydroponics (raising plants in water with no soil), Aeroponics (Hydroponics but grown in vertical towers), and Aquaponics (closed ecosystem using fish to fertilize the water the plants are grown in) are the only real way to feed a growing population and not destroy the environment. The Netherlands is already the leading European exporter of food, here is a great youtube video that touches on some of the ideas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5clOYWsNhhk
Bottom line is that traditional Organic farming isn't the answer anymore than modern factory farming. AgTech is something I'm passionate about and I honestly believe that if we don't adopt more modern science will we face a large crisis in our food systems sooner rather than later. Some crops will need to be soil based (grains and related crops mostly) but nearly everything else grows faster, more reliably, and with out the need for chemical treatments. There are a large number of Hydroponic and Aquaponic farms already in operation but the percentage is still very small.