Because lettuces has a short growing cycle. One of the best cases for artificial light is that it can be used in times when natural light is not enough. If yo

Because lettuces has a short growing cycle. One of the best cases for artificial light is that it can be used in times when natural light is not enough. If you have a crop like lettuces, that you can only grow 2x per year and now you can grow 12x per year in the same space it's easier to make the case than something like garlic that can be in the ground up to 8-9 months. If you can only turn the 'ground' or pod over once/year just like normal than you're only getting the stacking, but you could just use shelves in a greenhouse then and skip most of the tech. Strawberries are another good one, you can only double your production in beds with a 6 month growing cycle, (granted, you can stagger your growing cycles in an artificial environment). An awful lot of small scale farming is about turning over the resources you have as fast as possible to put product on the market and that is the same for flat land farming and vertical farming. It's not unlike other kinds of startups where you aim for an mvp maybe even a profitable mvp before you move on to the complex stuff for the big customers. Lettuces is a small farming MVP regardless of the tech used for farming (vertical, greenhost, flatland).