This research evaluates the current carbon footprint of vertical farming systems by comparing the impact of one kilogram of butterhead lettuce produced in an operational vertical farm to that of conventional open-field farming (OF), soil-based greenhouse cultivation (GH(s)) and hydroponic greenhouse cultivation (GH(h)) in the Netherlands. A typical farm is defined for OF, GH(s) and GH(h) in the Netherlands, based on existing databases. It is not yet possible to define a typical vertical farm (VF) due to the breadth of approaches. Therefore, an operational vertical farm was used as a case study. Within the dataset the baseline activity data has been collected within the tabs ‘OF’, ‘GH(s)’, GH(h) and ‘VF’. The carbon footprint of each case study was calculated by accounting for all the GHG emissions from activities within the system boundaries, from cradle-to-grave, for the life cycle of both the crop and the farm. These GHG emissions were calculated as follows: CO₂ -eq = activity data x EF, where CO 2-eq is ...