Yeah, this is what Barca should try to do. I am not big believer in Barca B. Having another higher level reserve team would be crucial. This is what City is doing, Liepzig etc.
I know it would cost a lot of money but Barca need to keep up with the times. We are past it now.
Barca is not a privately owned club and can't buy feeder clubs like Red Bull or City Football Group.
We've signed a partnership with Utrecht last summer to send them our youngsters on loan. Haven't done that so far but maybe we should. Eredivisie is a good developmental league. And maybe also find a similar club in Ligue 1.
But this is the most we can do. We can't use other clubs to buy players, develop them and then sell them to us under their market price if they turn out good enough or take a loss with those who won't. We would still be the one risking financial investment in players and hope they'd develop well at another club to maybe be good enough for us one day.
UEFA will also limit number of loans over the next few years so it's not like we can go the Chelsea way and have 30 or 40 players out on loans for years with most of them never getting anywhere close to their first team.
So like it or not Barca B is still our best bet for developing youngsters and for those who are too good for Barca B (but not quite good/ready enough for the first team yet) we should invididually look for the best possible loan destination. Could happen with Pedri this year and will be interesting where we'll loan him if he won't stay.
Another solution is "part-ownership" transfer like we did with Emerson which takes a bit of financial risk of our hands. But those kind of deals are in somewhat grey area and can't happen regularly.