What is it about?
We investigate new technology for growing vegetables: greenhouses that use electricity to provide light, heat, and cooling. We compare this to standard agricultural practice - growing vegetables in fields - as well as with traditional simple greenhouses. We compare use of energy, land, water, pesticide, fertilizer, greenhouse gas emissions, and other impacts.
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Why is it important?
Food production is essential. Fresh vegetables are healthy and delicious. People care about how their food is grown. Our aim is to cut through the hype and help people understand various impacts of food production - focusing on lettuce as a case study.
Perspectives
Our study suggests that there is a "sweet spot" for food production, between hyper-local and far distant agriculture. The method we investigated for growing a lot of food in urban areas - controlled environment agriculture - works great but uses a lot of energy, more than it provides benefits in less land and water use. Far distant agriculture is efficient, and transportation does not add much to the impacts; the main impacts of growing vegetables is in growing them, not transporting them, and the impacts of growing vegetables is small. Regional agriculture is also highly efficient, comparable to far distant agriculture, and can provide regional benefits to rural areas.
Valerie M. Thomas
Georgia Institute of Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The challenges of controlled environment hydroponic farming: a life cycle assessment of lettuce, The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, May 2025, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s11367-025-02463-6.
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