I understand your sentiment, but one's experience does not need to manifest like the ones you listed to be considered hard.
You listed one career choice and agriculture is actually the easiest industry. #2 lowest failure rate in 1 year, #1 lowest after 5 and after 10 years [1]. What you thought was fucking hard is objectively not compared to every other industry from BLS data. Although I'd still say it's a startup and is thus fucking hard personally.
Starting a company is very easy. Building a successful and sustainable one is fucking hard.
I've built a few successful companies but did it while having income (both active and passive). I recommend the same for anyone's first endeavor. I also recommend having a partner or two and maybe ONLY go solo after you've built a successful business. It's not glamorous being a startup CEO and can be very lonely without partners.
50% of businesses fail by year 5
And 80% of small businesses have no employees. Most of the 50% that survive to year 5 are just paying bills and aren't self-sustaining businesses that have enterprise value and can be sold.
If you want to be a one person show, yeah that's not hard in a service business. If you are average, 50% shot to make it 5 years.
If we're talking about building something that kicks off actual profit and has employees, and outperforms the opportunity cost of working for someone else or taking an equity stake in existing business, it is most certainly fucking hard.
To the parent - if you have savings and get a partner or two - I say keep applying but go for the startup too. The best businesses in my opinion are ones that make money closer to day 1 than year X. Figure that path out. Riches in niches. Don't worry about the macro environment.
[1] https://www.lendingtree.com/business/small/failure-rate/