As the human population grows in number and in urban locations, global food production will need scale to demand while concurrently minimizing its environmental impact. One possible answer for sustainably meeting future food demand is the adoption of controlled environment agriculture (CEA) systems. CEA includes indoor, greenhouse, and other types of growing systems that allow for the control of light intensity and duration, temperature, and humidity. As a horticultural approach, CEA has the ability to reduce water use by 95% while occupying 90% less land than traditional field agriculture. CEA also improves growers’ control over crop quality, which contributes to premium prices, while improving yield and reducing waste. Despite this promise, the emergent CEA industry faces a critical challenge: achieving economic feasibility while improving its systemic environmental sustainability; a problem underscored by the energy-intensive nature of the controlled environment. Our study integrates production efficiency with economic and environmental evaluation using a combination of a bioeconomic modeling approach followed by a strategic profitability analysis as well as a life cycle analysis (LCA). A case study was used to develop the spatiotemporal model, integrating three modules: production, labor and economic performance. The model employs a mathematical framework to represent interactions between biological systems, technological settings, and the economic systems that exploit them, which allow for the identification of relationships and production patterns amongst variables. The model’s economic output was then evaluated using the DuPont equations: measures of asset turnover (return on assets [ROA]), leverage (return on equity [ROE]), and profitability (net income/sales). These key performance indicators framed our analysis of the sample farm’s financial health. Finally, the LCA evaluated the farm's externalities across environmental impact multiple categories. The LCA evaluates CEA’s built environment as well as production resource use. The analysis focused on 4 different varieties: romaine, pak choi, red radish and basil. Results show that economically, labor is the most significant operating expense (41%) and environmentally, the crop production stage is the most significant contributor environmentally (due to lighting and HVAC energy use). These results conclude that deployment of automation could improve the financial viability of CEA farms; while investing in energy efficient lighting could reduce CEA’s environmental impact.
