Full Heads or Cut and Come Again? Economic Analysis of Leafy Green Cultivation in Solar-Powered Indoor Vertical Farms

Abstract

Although vertical indoor farming (IF) offers higher yields, reduced weather risk, and water savings, it requires higher capital expenditures (CapEx) and energy and labor-related operational expenditures (OpEx), causing many to fail economically. The solar powered agrivoltaic agrotunnel offers a promising solution to the elevated and unstable energy costs of IF, although a comprehensive economic analysis of such facilities with a specific focus on other operational and capital expenditures has not been done. To address this gap, this study investigates the profitability of two market options, each requiring different labor levels, for agrivoltaic agrotunnel based IF lettuce production using experimental data: (1) one-cut head Romaine lettuce, involving minimal labor during harvesting, and (2) labor-intensive “cut and come again” spring or green mix of Romaine, Red Oakleaf, and Red Outrageous lettuces. Differences in harvesting labor, yield, market value, consumable materials, and water consumption are evaluated using economic indicators of net present cost, net present value, return on investment (ROI), internal rate of return, and discounted payback period. While the maintenance costs of both agrotunnel and solar agrivoltaic systems were included, the energy cost was minimized to zero by designing a net-zero energy grid-connected photovoltaic system. A sensitivity analysis was conducted on all economic expenditures with a specific focus on the labor rate and the CapEx. Comparing the economic indicators showed that head Romaine, with the annual yield and labor requirement of 3272 kg/year and 2042 h/year, respectively, was only feasible when both CapEx and OpEx were kept at the minimum possible levels, and revenue was maximized. Spring mix, however, had a more reasonable feasibility range despite higher labor (3580 h/year) due to greater yield (5501 kg/year) as a result of more intensive harvesting activities. ROI above 10% were achievable when labor rates were near minimum wage (≤ $14 USD/h) and CapEx under $500,000 USD.

Received: 29 July 2025 | Revised: 4 December 2025 | Accepted: 23 January 2026

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/mrvxg/files/ osfstorage and https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/MRVXG.

Author Contribution Statement

Nima Asgari: Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Joshua M. Pearce: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.