We can not replace ground cover of plants with nothing but solar panels. The moisture difference alone would cause huge ecological issues nothing to say on the reduced plant matter.

Plus plants use sunlight to grow everything. That energy cost is way more massive than you think. It takes a fusion reactor in space to power it.
Trying to get the same effect from solar powering Leads will be far less efficient and take an area larger than the traditional farm to generate the power for a vertical farm and be less effective. Plus you would also need to run vertical water pumps which are difficult with the weight of water, air flow, and still need fertilizer and nutrients which would mostly be chemical synthetics for making sure it’s in the right concentrations.

Transportation costs are absolutely huge and more local transportation would be better but don’t mistake it for being much more efficient because of a single point that can be reduced.

Farming is a huge endeavor that works mostly cause it is free energy and resources that as we need to provide more becomes already worse. Trying to control that entire chain is extremely difficult and costly and should only be done as necessary.

It’s far easier to work on flat land that sprawls than vertical and the density would not even be in the favor of the vertical grow tower.

I am looking at total costs. It’s just not nearly a catch all solution because it’s far more intensive than people generally at a glance expect. And I’m for adopting it in specific situations and add more vertical grow to farm operations but it does not fix food to grow everything indoors.