This concluding chapter summarises the key arguments of the book and sets out the primary theoretical contributions of the work and how future glasshouse agrifood futures could be configured in ways that more centrally position the importance of labour rights in the value chain and a fairer deal for the role of growers and workers.

This chapter examines the system of post-Brexit labour migration and the glasshouse agrifood labour regime in the UK. It highlights the risks in the current labour regime for poor working conditions and exploitation.

This chapter examines the critical role that innovations relating to the rolling out of hydroponic technologies have played in the glasshouse agrifood labour regime. It focuses on the role that hydroponics has played in allowing growers to intensify the labour process in the face of the exacting conditions of production and tight margins that they have faced over time.

This chapter introduces the post-War labour regime that has been dominant in the glasshouse agrifood sector. It highlights the important, but regionally differentiated, role of migrant labour. It examines the organisation of the labour regime and the labour process in the two regions up until the UK’s departure from the European Union.

This chapter introduces the two regional contexts through which the book’s analysis proceeds. It positions these regions over time with respect to the role that glasshouse agrifood production has played in each region and how the industry has developed over time.

This chapter sets out the concept of ‘agrarian biopolitical articulations’ as a framework to understand the enduring food security crises faced by the UK and how these are articulated with the role that organisations play in the value chain. It brings together research on labour, technology and value chains to establish this theoretical framing for the book.

This chapter examines the changing nature of the glasshouse agrifood value chain and the dominant role played by powerful lead-firm supermarkets. It highlights the tight margins that growers operate under and the consequences for their sustainability and food security before turning to the types of upgrading strategies that growers have deployed in the value chain over time.

This introductory chapter sets out the enduring food security crisis that the UK has faced over the post-War period and positions it in relation to how the UK is situated with respect to global value chains of food supply, labour provisioning and the adoption of new technology. It introduces the core concept of the ‘total ecology’ as a way of understanding attempts to enhance food security through glasshouse agrifood production, but highlights the fragilities of this system of food production.

This chapter examines the most recent sets of technological interventions in the glasshouse agrifood value chain centred on the adoption of digital technologies and digital automation in the labour process. It explores the limits to their development and the ‘boundedness’ of technological innovations today.

This chapter turns to examine the role that technological development has played in the glasshouse agrifood value chain and how this has changed over the post-War period. It highlights the restructuring of the state-funded techno-science based and its increasing marketisation and fragmentation.