Biosphere 2 one of their main problems is that growing food was labor intensive, as I've found with my own hydroponics experiments.
I was enraptured by the project ever since I saw it in the late lamented Whole Earth Review. I was driving across country and made a detour to see it.
I'm glad it was built and we learned a lot from it. I'm not a fan of billionaires but good on Ed Bass for financing it.