Generally, a vertical farm is a building that houses an entire agri-food chain: production, transformation, sale and human consumption. However, in most cases, vertical farms are defined as buildings that only accommodate production and transformation, which follow the principles of mass production lines: the aim of the structures, in fact, is to produce exact quantities of identical products in known time, and often these products are salads and aromatic herbs, which have much lower costs.

To achieve this goal, the cultivation process takes place within a closed environment, completely controlled and independent from the external one, in which all environmental parameters are controlled. Soilless cultivation techniques, on the other hand, allow plants to be supplied with the exact amount of nutrients they need. In Italy, the sector is rapidly expanding and several interesting projects have been launched, and that aim to gain prominence at international level as well.