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Fields, greenhouses or vertical farms: what is…

Environment · August 12, 2026 · The Conversation · 6 min

The amount of land occupied by a farming system does not necessarily reflect its importance to our food supply.

<a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wheat-field-close-photograph-2683377083">Aaron Watkins/Shutterstock</a> </figcaption> </figure>

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/sven-batke-1306101">Sven Batke</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/edge-hill-university-1356">Edge Hill University</a>

When most people picture British farming, they probably imagine fields of wheat, potatoes or vegetables stretching across the countryside. But some of the food on supermarket shelves is produced in environments that look very different.

A tomato might spend its entire life inside a glasshouse, growing more than 20 metres tall with water and nutrients delivered directly to its roots. A lettuce could be grown inside a building, stacked on shelves under LED lights without ever seeing natural sunlight.

<a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/farming-597">These systems</a> – open fields, greenhouses and vertical farms – are sometimes presented as competing visions for the future of food. But they operate at completely different scales and, importantly, offer very different levels of control over the environment.

This matters as the climate changes. Moving crops indoors can protect them from drought, heat and unpredictable weather. But that control comes at a cost. The UK has around 17 million hectares of utilised agricultural land, with approximately 6.1 million hectares classified as <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/agriculture-in-the-united-kingdom-2025/summary?utm_source=chatgpt.com">croppable</a>. Around 3 million hectares are used for cereals alone.

By comparison, the UK’s horticultural crops (ranging from tomatoes and peppers to cucumbers and strawberries) occupy only around 147,000 hectares, and glasshouses account for a small fraction of that (approximately 850 hectares).

Vertical farming is smaller still, and not separately recorded in national agricultural land-use statistics. I estimate that these farms only occupy 0.0001% of the UK’s total agricultural land (around 10-30 hectares).

Yet the amount of land occupied by a farming system does not necessarily reflect its importance to our food supply.

Fields provide scale, but are more vulnerable to the climate. If you eat a slice of bread, the wheat used to make it was almost certainly grown outdoors. The same applies to barley, oilseed rape, potatoes and many vegetables.

The great advantage of open-field agriculture is scale. Sunlight and rainfall provide two of the most important inputs for plant growth without farmers having to manufacture either of them. Growing millions of tonnes of wheat inside illuminated buildings would make little economic or environmental sense.

The trade-off is control. Farmers cannot decide when it rains or how hot a field becomes. This becomes particularly important during drought. Irrigation can compensate for a lack of rainfall, particularly for key crops such as potatoes and many other vegetables, but access to water differs considerably between farms.

A <a href="https://www.southwestwater.co.uk/environment/water-resources/hosepipe-ban">hosepipe ban</a> does not automatically mean that farmers must stop irrigating. Domestic restrictions are different from the rules governing agricultural abstraction from rivers and groundwater.

But during prolonged drought, abstraction can also be <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/water-abstraction-plan-2017/water-abstraction-plan-environment">restricted to protect water supplies</a> and the environment. Agriculture therefore faces a difficult problem: crops often require the most irrigation precisely when water resources are under the greatest pressure.

Greenhouses offer control, but require a lot of resources. Walk from a field into a modern tomato greenhouse and the level of environmental control changes dramatically.

Plants may grow without soil while computers regulate irrigation, nutrients, ventilation, humidity and temperature. Modern systems can deliver water directly to the root zone and collect drainage water to be treated and reused. This means they can be up to 90% more <a href="https://figshare.edgehill.ac.uk/articles/report/UK_Greenhouse_Grower_Market_Intelligence_Report_-_2026/31113616?backTo=%2Fcollections%2FGreenhouse_Innovation_Consortium_GIC_%2F8256118&file=61220842">efficient in using water</a>.

<figure class="align-center zoomable"> <a aria-label="Zoomable image" href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/753132/original/file-20260810-60-q4n958.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="red strawberries growing inside huge greenhouse" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/753132/original/file-20260810-60-q4n958.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/753132/original/file-20260810-60-q4n958.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/753132/original/file-20260810-60-q4n958.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/753132/original/file-20260810-60-q4n958.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/753132/original/file-20260810-60-q4n958.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/753132/original/file-20260810-60-q4n958.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/753132/original/file-20260810-60-q4n958.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a> <figcaption> Many crops are grown inside huge greenhouses where this is greater protection from extreme weather. <a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/fresh-red-strawberry-fruits-growing-greenhouse-2758965585">Noi Pattanan/Shutterstock</a> </figcaption> </figure>

That makes greenhouse production potentially very water-efficient. It also allows large quantities of crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers to be produced from a relatively small area. But water efficiency is not the same as water security.

The Netherlands, home to one of the world’s most advanced greenhouse industries, illustrates this problem. Recent dry conditions have increased pressure on surface and groundwater supplies, affecting the availability of water for agriculture, including <a href="https://www.fruitnet.com/eurofruit/dutch-glasshouse-growers-fear-major-losses-after-irrigation-ban/272350.article">greenhouse horticulture</a>.

A greenhouse can recycle water extremely efficiently, but it still needs an original source. Capturing rainfall from greenhouse roofs, increasing water storage and recycling irrigation water will therefore become increasingly important as drought risk increases.

Temperature creates another challenge. Greenhouses provide protection from the outside environment, but they are not isolated from it. If tomatoes grow best within a particular temperature range, maintaining that range becomes harder as outdoor conditions become more extreme. When it becomes hotter outside, growers may need more ventilation, shading or cooling. During cold periods, additional heating is required.

This means that the way we operate greenhouses today may not be how we operate them in the future. Climate change could require greater intervention simply to maintain the same growing conditions. And intervention costs money.

Vertical farms sit at the other end of this spectrum of control. Crops such as lettuce, herbs and leafy vegetables can be grown on multiple stacked layers inside buildings – <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce85y5m11qqo">even several kilometres underground</a> – with light, water, nutrients, humidity and temperature all tightly controlled.

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