One of the difficulty for smaller farmers is the transition period where the field produces a lower yield. They don't have the monetary buffer available for that. I hope that Governments with a minimum of foresight will fund those efforts.
No sane farmer who derives their living from farming is going to take such a huge risk when annualized corn-soy production is heavily subsidized by the government (rightly or wrongly) on the _possibility_ of these practices maybe paying off (someday).
https://thinkingagriculture.io/incentivizing-regenerative-ag...
edit: There is a carefully crafted statement on the OP link saying increased yields in dry years. Outside of 2020 and 2012, the Midwest has been anything but dry. Can't expect people to adapt unprofitable practices
Milk is very subsidized as well. You could pair local dairies with local farmers participating in similar programs.
What the subsidies do is subsidize insurance. Buy insurance and if you have a crop failure you get paid as if you had the average yield over the past 10 years. However your average goes down as well for the next failure so better not have too many bad years in a row.
Organic despite the name is not the best thing for the environment. Some of it is, that quickly is normal farming. What is left is not using safe chemicals, instead using much more harmful - but natural - ones, or tillage to control weeds. (Note that this article is pushing no-till which is conventional farming today)
The 'niche' guys may make good money, but their complexity is probably 1x-5x (maybe more) a 'stereotypical' row crop farmers farmers. That has to factor in somewhere.
You still quite easily can if you own the land outright, even in the grain business. The problem is that you need multi-millions to buy 100-200 acres, which nobody wanting to start farming has, save situations of inheritance. That means, for most, the vast majority of the potential profit turns into servicing debt or paying rent to the actual landowner. When you are only receiving a small portion of the pie that the land is actually generating, that's when you need thousands of acres to accumulate enough.
To put it another way: The going rate for rent for farmland around here is around $300/acre. $300 * 200 acres = $60,000. If you own the land and don't have to pay rent, that alone is a decent living; more than most people make. And that is ignoring the profit that someone renting would expect to make off the land.