1. How about automating harvesting? The article suggests that there is a fairly sizeable unskilled workforce, potentially involved in harvesting, packing etc. I think I read elsewhere that the costs involved in this are relatively low and that there might be little cost benefit in automating. However, an automated solution could potentially have other benefits, e.g. opportunity for a "pick on demand fresh for me at the time I schedule" option, e.g. via an app (assuming automated inventory etc.). Going one step further, if you had automated planting, pruning etc. you might even be able to create "black boxes" which would in effect be fresh produce vending machines.

2. Does this scale to larger perennial plants, e.g. fruit trees? If vertical farming is only viable for salad greens (where you harvest pretty much the entire plant and then start again), not just from a cost perspective (value per kilo of produce, frequency of harvests, space occupied by plants, etc.) but also from a practical perspective (e.g. does aeroponics even work for trees - a quick read of wikipedia is inconclusive) then it isn't going to make the world a better place.