Scott is silhouetted inside his greenhouse, his second hydroponic lettuce prototype, on a friend's property along the Rillito.

Josh Scott is a University of Arizona entrepreneurial student and mechanical engineer who wants to be a lettuce farmer.

It may sound like a waste of a couple of potentially lucrative, or at least marketable, degrees. But Scott, a student in the UA's McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship, has a few facts on hand that make hydroponic lettuce production sound like money to him.

He says the average American eats about 35 pounds of lettuce a year.

Nearly all of it is grown in California or near Yuma, even the lettuce that winds up 2,000-some miles away on East Coast plates.

Energy prices are down for now, but that won't last.

Water is becoming more precious and expensive.

Interest in locally grown food is taking off, because more people are becoming concerned about food purity, where their food comes from and how far it comes.

Scott says the system has only 10 percent of the water loss of dirt-farming lettuce, a major cost saver.

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