How does vertical farming work?

Vertical farming grows crops indoors, under artificial light and in a controlled climate (Benke and Tomkins, 2017). Its proponents aim to produce more food on less land, closer to where people live. Whether it can do that at a reasonable cost and with a low environmental footprint is much less settled. This article separates what the published studies have measured or modelled from what is only claimed.

How it works

Vertical farms are described as indoor, climate-controlled facilities, often urban and built to high-rise designs, in which crops are grown with much greater use of technology and automation than field farming (Benke and Tomkins, 2017). The main efficiency measures named in a 2025 systematic review are LED lighting, smart HVAC control and smart irrigation (Aborujilah, 2025).

The review names high energy requirements and costs as the main obstacle to large-scale adoption. In a UK life-cycle study, electricity demand was one of the two main environmental hotspots, and the climate result depended on the energy source used (Gargaro and colleagues, 2024).

What has been demonstrated

"Demonstrated" here means the result comes from measured data or from an analysis of published studies. The studies differ in how much they can show.

Efficiency gains. A systematic review of 52 articles published from 2014 to early 2024, following PRISMA guidelines, reports that high-efficiency LEDs, smart HVAC control and IoT-based irrigation have reduced electricity use. It also reports that the savings depended heavily on crop variety, climate, facility layout, system design and geography. The review is a synthesis of other studies, not a single measurement, and newer work is not included.

Measured life-cycle data from one UK farm. Gargaro and colleagues (2024) used primary data from a commercial UK vertical farm growing lettuce. They compared it with literature data for field-grown lettuce. Electricity demand and the growing medium used for plugs were the main hotspots. The climate-change result was similar to or lower than field cultivation, depending on energy source. Some other categories, including freshwater eutrophication and acidification, were slightly higher than for field cultivation.

Crop range. The UK life-cycle study above concerns lettuce. The demonstrated crop range is therefore narrow.

What is modelled rather than measured

Three studies rely mainly on models or scenarios rather than direct farm measurements.

Barbosa and colleagues (2015) compared hydroponic and conventional lettuce in Yuma, Arizona, using crop budgets, government statistics and engineering calculations. They report that hydroponics gave about 11 times the yield per unit area, but needed roughly 82 times more energy. The hydroponic system in the abstract is a greenhouse, not an indoor vertical farm, and its figures are theoretical, so they are not a measurement of a vertical farm.

Arcasi and colleagues (2024) built an energy-balance model of a vertical farm and ran it for several cities, including Stockholm, Naples and Riyadh. They found that total energy consumption and cost per kilogram depend strongly on climate, the efficiency of the national electricity system and energy prices. In the model, energy use in Riyadh was up to 86% higher than in Stockholm. After optimising internal conditions, the energy cost of lettuce in the growth chamber was €0.85 per kg in Stockholm, €1.35 in Naples and €1.75 in Riyadh. These are modelled energy costs only, not total production costs. The abstract does not give a breakdown of lighting and HVAC shares, so this article does not quote one.

Joensuu and colleagues (2024) ran a life-cycle assessment of lettuce in vertical farming and greenhouse production in Finland. The vertical farming data came from one Finnish production site, and energy options were compared as scenarios. In their scenarios, vertical farming had the lowest impacts when it used renewable energy and waste-heat recovery, and the greenhouse scenario using average energy had the largest climate-change impact. With average energy and no heat recovery, vertical farming had higher mineral and metal use and water scarcity impacts than the greenhouse.

What is only reported

"Reported" here means a claim made by a source that the studies we checked do not verify.

We did not open any company figures for yield, cost or profit, so this article gives none. The claims below come from academic authors, not from operators' own accounts.

Benke and Tomkins (2017) describe the claimed advantages of vertical farming: biosecurity, protection from pests and droughts, and reduced transport and fossil fuel use. The article evaluates these claims alongside potential disadvantages. De Carbonnel and colleagues (2022) write that high electricity use hurts the industry's environmental record. They also say that advances in LED lighting have enabled vertical farming to become a commercial reality. That describes farms operating, not farms making a profit.

What is speculative

Wide use for staple crops. The life-cycle and modelling studies we opened concern lettuce. Nothing in them tests vertical farming for staple grains or other calorie-dense crops.

Urban food systems at scale. Benke and Tomkins present urban vertical farming as one proposed response to population growth and declining arable land per person. They weigh its advantages against its disadvantages, so it remains a possibility to be assessed.

Grid-timed production. De Carbonnel and colleagues propose using plant photobiology to adjust energy use so that it matches grid electricity availability, which they call demand-side energy management. The sources do not show that this works at grid scale.

Limits and open problems

• Energy. The systematic review names high energy requirements and costs as the main barrier to large-scale adoption, and electricity was a main environmental hotspot in the UK study. Results change with the electricity source, climate and facility design, so a figure from one site does not transfer to another.
• Capital and skills. The systematic review lists high upfront spending and limited access to qualified personnel as barriers to wider adoption.
• Data. The same review points to inconsistent reporting standards and a lack of real-world data, which makes like-for-like comparison hard.
• Mixed environmental results. Lower climate impact in one life-cycle study does not mean lower impact in every category. Gargaro and colleagues found higher freshwater eutrophication and acidification.
• Does it pay? None of the sources we opened reports a farm's profit or loss, or discusses company closures, so this article cannot answer whether vertical farming pays. The existence of commercial farms is not evidence that they are profitable.

What to watch next

The review calls for multidisciplinary longitudinal field studies and standardised metric definitions. Useful next evidence would be energy and yield data from operating farms, reported on a common basis. Watch also whether new farms use low-carbon electricity and recover waste heat, since the Finnish study shows that waste-heat recovery changes the result and the UK study shows that the electricity source does. Finally, watch whether any work extends beyond lettuce to other crops.