>6) Soil type and exhaustion. Only certain type of plants can be grown in certain soils and environments and only for so long before the soil is exhausted of nutrients.
Forgive me for the possible ignorance, but that sounds like just a different means of addressing the same problem of having to add nutrients to the soil. Don't we add fertilizer/till/change soil? Why is it better to dose with nutrients?
It's not the same. It's much easier to do dosing with water since they're soluable and can be evenly dispersed. The different in medium with dirt makes this much hard. There will also be build up of unused nutrients that throw off the proportions. The build up of nutrients and non-uniform distribution can make the crops vulnerable to various side effects including nutrient burn. This build up in hydroponics is mitigated by periodically flushing and replacing the water system.
Wouldn't this also be true for vertical farming?