Friends bought a relatively large olive plantation. They had a ton of savings, moved from NL to Portugal and went 'all in' It took them more than a decade before they really got the hang of it. By then their savings had depleted and they had no other option than to flee forward and really make it a success. It worked, barely. There is no such thing as a 'crop that essentially grows itself'. It may seem like that to people that visit supermarkets rather than farmhouses, toolsheds and plantations. Any kind of cash crop will require money invested upfront (land, plants, this part seems to be covered), money until maturation (irrigation, fencing, possibly pruning depending on the crop), money to harvest. And if you're lucky they pay-off from the harvest covers all those other costs, or hopefully at least a substantial fraction. And if it doesn't there's always chapter 11...

When you're used to the kind of income that software can generate farming anything seems like very hard work, even when it works well.