Basically those little 40-100 acre farms are just fine for self sufficient hobby farms and homesteads, you just can't make a middle class living off one, but then I remember how a lot of the multi-generational farmers lived. None of the kids were lacking for the normal toys or teenagers lacking the vehicle of their choice, as long as it was something basic and middling off the Ford of Chevy lot, or a used Dodge. A new middling car, or a used musclecar.

I remember one family that had been on the same 60 acre homestead for several generations and had kept improving it the whole time, to the point they had several acres under a greenhouse. They had everything and lacked nothing. Other families that had upgraded over the years had shifted from cattle to dairy for instance, with a dairy operation that had on site pasteurization and bottling being a major accomplishment, and meant financial security for generations on down the line. If that upgraded to cheese and other dairy products, they did quite well.

You are right though, basic grain farming was a loser deal, according to the guys who just had to drop $100K of 1978 money on a brand new Versatile tractor or new combine every other year.

The two ways you got paid in farming were to not own any of the capitol investment and get paid well for skilled labor, or to own and control everything from field to fork. All those Mormon families with a dozen kids all getting new cars when they come of age, and going to the Air Force academies and such, that's farmer families that own their own operation from field to food processing. Like old Gene would say, the farmer maybe gets 10c out of a loaf of bread, but that hippie down the road getting $2 a loaf (back then) out of the fancy artisan bread. Is probably still doing his thing, nowdays at $8 a loaf.

Farm to fork control with on site processing and packaging, that's where financial independence is, and that's the future of small scale farm investment. Those permaculture and natural foods people get it to work. In Portland, a friend of mine had a "farm subscription service" where you just paid $20 a month and this farmer would drop produce off weekly at a place which worked a lot like a food bank. In fact, I think it was a repurposed food bank. If you were a subscriber to the thing, you would just go in and pick up whatever they happened to have harvested and dropped off. The big deal they were looking for though was supplying restaurants and food karts. There was talk of upgrading it to include meat and dairy at some point but my friend died before introducing me to the people so I am not sure how far it went.

I know that's one of the things we were looking at with the Diaxaris project, but not many people were putting much into it. I dropped off construction supplies and money, showed up to work once every two months or so. Some eastern Washington guys put in a bunch of farm and food process surplus stuff but one guy brought a bunch of small orchard trees and an irrigation system for them. The western washington and Seattle area people who showed up mainly just did some shooting, drinking, gossipping and plotted how they were going to rip shit off when SHTF. Maximizing recon and intelligence gathering, minimizing investment...

I have been shopping small farm properties online, and for the most part, acreage has been separated off from the housing and then there are building restrictions on the acreage, and the housing does not come with enough acreage for any respectable amount of food production other than maybe greenhouses and gardens, which of course the sellers will imply is decent for marijuana production and then snitch off to law enforcement for the second set of payoff in the real estate deal.

40 acre homesteads can still provide plenty for a family that actually works the land and is not jumping into tractor debt, but egos and shiny new equipment seem to always get the better of that and these guys end up to their eyeballs in debt with a barn full of petroleum burning toys.

Jack Spirko has the system for the modern small farm figured out pretty well. He has investors and subscribers who treat it as a SHTF bugout location and they contribute to that end. It means he has lots of extra manpower if shit hits the fan and can sustain himself on the property with what he considers an acceptable lifestyle if shit is not on the fan.

That's the kicker right there, subsistence farming has little or no appeal to anybody when shit is not on the fan. It costs money to keep pace with expected upgrades, and that means getting more people to invest in the farm, or going into debt. It's either collectivized with an investment group, or collateralized with a bank.