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My impression is young farmers without land start with Animals because you can do it. Animals can live on land that cannot be farmed for row crops, and need much less land to make some money. so you buy some land - a few acres - then raise animals on that while working a day job someplace to pay the bills. As land becomes available you buy it, but sticking with animals as that is what you know. after 20 years of this you have enough trust with the banks to buy some row crop field that goes on sale. Another 10 years and you finally are earning enough from the farm to live without the other job and 10 more years and you can retire - letting your kids inherit a nice income from the mostly paid off farm (or sell the farm and retire to a nice life)

> I don't even know how you'd approach starting from scratch unless you were already rich.

Well, you are not going to start any kind of business without some kind of working capital. To be rich, for some definition of rich, is always a necessity when starting a business. That is not exclusive to farming.

I'm not sure farming is any worse than any other business[1], though. I have started a number of businesses in my day and the farm was probably the easiest of them to get into. Like any startup without venture capital – you start as small as possible, prove the business model, and then slowly work towards growth.

> A tiny 100 acre farm's land is worth north of 1 million dollars

Ah, if only. Imagine how easy farming would be if 100 acres was only $1MM! We haven't seen farmland that cheap around here in 20 years.

[1] Maybe software has an edge if you can find success with nothing but a budget computer, but your time commitment is going to be many orders of magnitude larger, so I expect it still requires more working capital in the end.

I wasn't sure what current prices were, which is why I said north of. I know back 10 years ago I saw some for about $10,000 an acre, but for all I know it wasn't great land for one reason or another. I've also heard my region has some of the best soil in the world so I wasn't sure if my prices were generalized enough.

I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin (and I knew plenty of crop farmers as well, of course), and frankly none of what you said is congruent with my own experience. As orenlindsey said, farmers are generally smart people who have to juggle many hats and work their asses off in order to scrape out a very modest living. "Genius" is probably stretching a bit, but they aren't stupid laggards who get by on the inheritance they got from their parents the way you imply.

> The downside, of course, is that you need to be born in to it. A tiny 100 acre farm's land is worth north of 1 million dollars, not to mention a ton of other startup costs. Land isn't for sale very often, as usually at least one child wants to take it up. I don't even know how you'd approach starting from scratch unless you were already rich.

This is just flat out false. My dad started our farm (90 acres) from scratch. He did it by working his ass off, often working two or three jobs, while living frugally and saving as much as he could for a down payment. Then he got a mortgage, just like most people do when they buy property. It's hard in the sense that saving money is always hard, but it's certainly not impossible and something where you can't pull it off without a helping hand from your parents.

I'm not so sure he'd be able to do that nowadays.

My parents bought a 60 acre property on a truck driver and part time school bus driver's salary. There's no way my wife and I could afford the same property today, even with us both having degrees. Land is freaking expensive now, and I assume farm equipment is also more than it was back then.

Don't get me wrong; I'm sure there are ways to do it, but I've known plenty of farmers and apart from hobby type farms they all inherited their land.

And of course, as usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Farmers aren't all geniuses, but they also aren't mostly lazy idiots like you depict them to be.

I didn't say they were mostly lazy idiots. I'd work less too, if I were able. There's just no need to put them on a pedestal.

> Animals are hard work and I don't understand why any small time farmer still does it.

I guess it depends on the animal, and how many. I work sometimes on a hobby farm with around 30 pineywoods cattle and they're almost maintenance free. The hay is more work than those cattle and basically all we do for that is drive tractors around for a few days, a few times a year.

People who just inherit a farm and get other people to run it aren't farmers.

That's how most farming has been arranged since the invention of agriculture.

Not so. By definition, both in common usage and legally, the farmer is the owner. The farmer may also work in the operation, but that is not a strict requirement.

Calling someone who owns land and hires people to work it a farmer is like calling someone who owns a factory a "factory worker". In some technical sense maybe it's correct, but that's not what people mean when they use the term.

Not at all. Again, farmer refers to the owner. This is echoed in the dictionary as well as what is written in law.

The word people use for what you describe is farmhand. It is the farmhand who works on a farm. The farmhand is the agricultural equivalent of a factory worker. Indeed, someone who owns a farm, but does not work on it, would not be considered a farmhand, but they most definitely would be a farmer.

It is technically possible for one to be both a farmer and a farmhand, but being a farmer does not imply that one is also a farmhand. They are distinct roles.

"Factory worker" is more like "farm hand". It would be weird for a farm owner to give that answer, when asked what their job is.