Reviewed August 2026 against USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, the World Gold Council AISC Cost Curve, and USDA Economic Research Service data.

Try it: Estimated annual cost →

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Two Cost Questions, One Page
• Gold Production Cost: The Numbers Right Now
• What AISC Actually Measures (and Why Two Companies Report Different Numbers)
• Gold Production Cost Chart: Reading the Cost Curve
• US Gold Production: Volume, Value, and Where It Comes From
• Greenhouse Farming Cost: What USDA and University Data Show
• Greenhouse Cost Calculator
• Comparative Table: Gold Production Cost vs. Greenhouse Farming Cost
• Why a Mining Company Is Writing About Greenhouse Costs
• Farmonaut: Satellite-Based Mineral Detection
• Video Insights: Gold Mining and Exploration
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Conclusion: How to Keep These Numbers Current
• Try it: Estimated annual cost

Introduction: Two Cost Questions, One Page

Two different readers land on this page with two different questions. One wants to know what it actually costs to produce an ounce of gold, and why the number they see quoted keeps changing. The other wants to know what it costs to run a greenhouse — dollars per square foot, not a vague “it depends.” Both questions have real, sourced answers, and both belong on this page because both are cost-of-production questions that get buried under marketing copy and vague ranges everywhere else they’re asked.

The short version: the global gold mining industry’s production-weighted median all-in sustaining cost (AISC) was $1,709 per ounce in 2025, per World Gold Council Cost Curve data, up from an average of $1,276 per ounce in 2023. Greenhouse vegetable production in the United States runs $7 to $25 per square foot per year, according to USDA Economic Research Service outlook data and university extension research. Everything below breaks down where those figures come from, how to read them, and how to check whether they’ve moved since this was written.

Gold Production Cost: The Numbers Right Now

“Gold production cost” is not one number — it’s a family of related figures depending on whether you mean the price gold sells for, the cost to mine it, or the total value of a country’s output. Here’s what’s actually published, with dates attached to every figure so you can tell how fresh it is:

• Market price: The US gold price averaged $3,300 per ounce in 2025, per USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025.
• Industry-wide production cost (AISC): The production-weighted median all-in sustaining cost across gold miners globally was $1,709 per ounce in 2025, per World Gold Council Cost Curve Analysis — up from an average of $1,276 per ounce in 2023.
• Company-specific guidance: Equinox Gold’s own 2025 cost guidance, published by the company, puts its all-in sustaining cost at $1,800 to $1,900 per ounce for the year.
• Total US production value: US domestic gold mine production was valued at $17 billion in 2025, per USGS.

Notice the gap between the $3,300/oz market price and the roughly $1,709/oz median production cost: that spread is the margin gold miners are working with as of 2025, before accounting for exploration, taxes, and capital projects that sit outside the AISC definition. AISC and market price are not the same axis and should never be subtracted from each other as if they were profit — see the next section for why.

What AISC Actually Measures (and Why Two Companies Report Different Numbers)

All-in sustaining cost (AISC) is the mining industry’s standard measure of the true cost of keeping a mine running and producing an ounce of gold. It was developed by the World Gold Council specifically because simpler “cash cost” figures left out too much. AISC includes:

1. Direct mining costs — labor, fuel, reagents, maintenance
2. Processing and refining costs
3. On-site general and administrative costs
4. Sustaining capital expenditure — the spending required just to keep current production going, as opposed to expansion
5. Royalties and production taxes

It excludes exploration for new deposits, growth capital for new mines, and finance costs — which is exactly why a company’s AISC guidance ($1,800–$1,900/oz for Equinox Gold in 2025) can sit well above the broader industry median ($1,709/oz in 2025, per the World Gold Council) without either figure being wrong. Ore grade, mine depth, labor costs, energy prices, and local regulatory requirements all push an individual operation’s AISC up or down relative to the industry-wide median. A company mining lower-grade ore or operating in a higher-cost labor market will report a higher AISC than one with high-grade, shallow, mechanized deposits — that’s the whole reason cost-curve analysis exists as a category of data.

How to check today’s figure: AISC is updated quarterly by individual mining companies in their investor filings (Q1 through Q4 reports) and compiled annually into cost-curve form by the World Gold Council. For the current global median, go to the World Gold Council’s AISC data page. For a specific company’s current guidance, its investor relations page — for example Equinox Gold’s production and cost guidance release — is the primary source, not a secondary aggregator.

Gold Production Cost Chart: Reading the Cost Curve

A gold production cost chart, in industry usage, almost always means a “cost curve” — mines ranked left to right from lowest AISC to highest, showing what share of global production comes in under any given cost threshold. The World Gold Council publishes this as its Cost Curve Analysis. Rather than reconstruct a chart that requires per-mine data this brief doesn’t contain, here’s what the two published reference points actually tell you about the curve’s shape:

• In 2023, the global AISC average was $1,276/oz.
• By 2025, the global AISC production-weighted median had risen to $1,709/oz.

That’s a difference of $433/oz between two data points two years apart — but note they’re not strictly comparable measures (average vs. median), which is a common trap when stitching together cost-curve figures from different reporting years. If you’re building your own chart for investment or budgeting purposes, pull the underlying quartile data directly from the World Gold Council’s page rather than approximating it from headline averages, since the actual curve shape (how steep the jump is from the 25th to 75th percentile mine) is where the real signal lives.

US Gold Production: Volume, Value, and Where It Comes From

On the supply side, USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 reports the following for US domestic gold mining:

• 160 metric tons of gold mined domestically in 2025
• $17 billion total value of that production, at the 2025 average price of $3,300/oz
• 64% of total US gold production came from Nevada alone in 2025

Nevada’s dominance is the single most useful fact for anyone trying to understand US gold cost structure: the state’s large-scale, established open-pit and underground operations along the Carlin Trend and elsewhere benefit from economies of scale and mature infrastructure that push their AISC below that of smaller, newer, or more remote US operations in states like Alaska or Montana. When a US-focused AISC figure is quoted, it’s disproportionately a Nevada-driven number.

One gap worth being direct about: USGS reports production volume and total value, not a per-ounce mining cost for US operations specifically. There is no USGS-published “US gold production cost per ounce” figure — that’s a mining-company-level AISC disclosure, which is why the World Gold Council’s global cost-curve data (not USGS) is the correct source for the per-ounce cost question.

Greenhouse Farming Cost: What USDA and University Data Show

Switching commodities entirely: greenhouse farming cost is a per-square-foot question, not a per-acre one, because greenhouse vegetable production is measured and budgeted by growers on a square-footage basis. USDA Economic Research Service outlook data, combined with university extension cost-budget research, puts annual greenhouse vegetable production costs at $7 to $25 per square foot per year — a wide range driven by crop choice, heating method, and structure type (low tunnel vs. glass or polycarbonate greenhouse with climate control).

Labor is a major line item inside that range. USDA’s Economic Research Service reported the average wage for crop, nursery, and greenhouse farmworkers at $18.24 per hour in 2024. Greenhouse vegetable production is more labor-intensive per square foot than field row-crop production — transplanting, trellising, and hand-harvesting all add hours that outdoor mechanized farming doesn’t require at the same density.

For growers who want a regional cost breakdown rather than a national range, Ohio State University’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center publishes crop-by-crop and input-category cost data specific to Ohio growing conditions — useful as a detailed model even for growers elsewhere, since it shows how the national range splits between heating, labor, substrate, and packaging. That resource is not a link this brief can verify as a citable URL here, so treat it as a search target: look up “Ohio State CEAC cost of production” for the current version.

Two gaps worth naming directly, rather than papering over with a hedge: there is no single uniform USDA per-acre cost figure for greenhouse vegetables nationally — only the per-square-foot range above, because acre-based conversion depends on how densely a grower lays out beds and walkways, which varies by operation. And there is no USDA-published greenhouse-specific wholesale or retail price series for tomatoes, cucumbers, or lettuce — USDA’s price data covers field and seasonal averages, not greenhouse-grown product specifically. If you need a current per-acre cost for your own operation, take your planned square-foot layout and multiply directly using the calculator below, adjusting the per-square-foot input as your own quotes come in.

Greenhouse Cost Calculator

Use the USDA-sourced per-square-foot range above as your starting inputs, then adjust to your own structure size, cost tier, and labor hours to estimate your annual greenhouse production cost.

Assumptions: the per-square-foot input already reflects the USDA-sourced $7–$25/year range and covers non-labor inputs (structure, heating, substrate, inputs); labor is added separately so you can model your own crew size and wage. Excludes financing costs, land cost, and one-time construction/capital expenditure. Adjust the per-square-foot figure to match your own crop and climate-control tier.

Comparative Table: Gold Production Cost vs. Greenhouse Farming Cost

These two commodities don't compete for the same land or capital in most US regions, but a side-by-side of what's actually published for each shows how differently "production cost" is measured and disclosed across industries:

Figures dated as shown; see the Refresh notes throughout this article for where to pull updated numbers.

Why a Mining Company Is Writing About Greenhouse Costs

Farmonaut's core work is satellite-based mineral detection for exploration companies, which naturally puts gold production economics — ore grade, energy intensity, AISC — inside our subject matter. Greenhouse cost data sits on this same page because both are "cost of production" questions that get asked by very different readers, and both deserve sourced, current answers rather than a vague estimate. If your interest is on the mining side rather than agriculture, the sections below on gold exploration tools are the relevant ones.

Regardless of which side brought you here, the underlying discipline is the same: don't accept a cost figure without knowing whether it's a cash cost or an all-in figure, what period it covers, and how often the source updates it. That discipline is what separates a usable cost estimate from a headline number that misleads by omission.

Farmonaut: Satellite-Based Mineral Detection

For gold exploration specifically, ore grade is the single biggest lever on future AISC — lower-grade deposits mean more rock processed per ounce, which is exactly the input that pushes production cost up (see the AISC breakdown above). Identifying higher-grade targets before drilling is where satellite-based exploration changes the cost equation upstream of mining itself.

• 🛰️ Rapid, non-invasive exploration: Multispectral and hyperspectral satellite imagery identifies mineralized zones, faults, and alteration patterns without ground disturbance during early-stage exploration.
• 🚀 Time and cost savings: Reduces exploration timelines from months or years to days, and cuts up-front costs by up to 80–85% compared to traditional ground-based exploration.
• 🌐 Global agility: More than 13 mineral types mapped — including gold, copper, cobalt, lithium, uranium, and specialty minerals — across 18+ countries.
• 📊 Advanced reporting: Heatmaps, 3D subsurface models, drilling angle recommendations, and quantity indications for investment and development decisions.
• ♻️ Environmental alignment: Avoiding unnecessary ground disturbance during initial exploration and optimizing drilling targets aligns with ESG practices in the sector.

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• 🌍 Instant global reach—scan tens of thousands of hectares remotely
• 🔍 Pinpoint accuracy—reduce wasted drilling, financial and environmental cost
• ⏳ Supercharged speed—move from "unknown" to clear priorities in a matter of days
• 💡 Actionable insights—start mine planning, funding, and ESG assessments with confidence
• 📈 Cost savings—conserve working capital for the mineralization zones that truly matter

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Video Insights: Gold Mining and Exploration

These videos cover gold mining operations, exploration technology, and regional production stories referenced throughout this article:

• DRC's Copper Wealth: Unlocking Africa's Mineral Potential
• Gold Rush Arizona: History & Modern Gold Mining Revival | Ultimate Guide
• Ghana Gold Discovery: How Satellite Tech Pinpoints Hidden Deposits Accurately!
• Australia's Gold Mining Revolution: Tech & Sustainability
• Satellites Spark a New Alaska Gold Rush
• Modern Gold Rush: Inside the Global Race for Gold | Documentary
• How Gold is Extracted from Mines | Full Guide
• Arizona Copper Boom: AI Drones, Hyperspectral & ESG Tech Triple Porphyry Finds

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion: How to Keep These Numbers Current

Both cost questions this page answers have moving parts on a predictable schedule. Gold AISC updates quarterly at the company level and annually at the industry-median level via the World Gold Council — recheck gold.org/goldhub/data/aisc-gold each time a new quarter of company filings lands. US production volume and value figures come from USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, published annually — the 2025 edition is at pubs.usgs.gov, and a newer edition should exist by the time you're reading this more than a year out. Greenhouse cost budgets come from USDA ERS outlook reports, also on an annual cycle — search "cost of production" plus your crop name at ers.usda.gov for the current figures.

The durable method, regardless of which number moves: always check whether a gold cost figure is cash cost or AISC before comparing it to another source, and always check whether a greenhouse cost figure is per-square-foot or per-acre before applying it to your own layout. Getting that distinction right matters more than getting this year's exact number, because the distinction doesn't expire.

Want to future-proof your gold exploration project with satellite-based intelligence? Map your mining site here