Farming as a business gets idealized in the US and there's often this concept of a good old days when family farming was profitable and stable.
But historically speaking farming has always been a boom and bust industry. Even during the land rush days in the US the amount of space granted per farm was barely enough / not enough to scrape by, even at that time.
Now everything is so heavily tied up with legislation to try to recreate appropriate market conditions that I suspect whatever the actual market would be without all that legislation is an unknown.
I grew up around folks trying to scrape by on their family farms living at the whims of markets that can make or break them over the course of just a few years. As much as I like the ideal of the family farm, I'm not sure it is, and not sure it ever was a good way to make a living (outside some exceptions).
But historically speaking farming has always been a boom and bust industry. Even during the land rush days in the US the amount of space granted per farm was barely enough / not enough to scrape by, even at that time.
Now everything is so heavily tied up with legislation to try to recreate appropriate market conditions that I suspect whatever the actual market would be without all that legislation is an unknown.
I grew up around folks trying to scrape by on their family farms living at the whims of markets that can make or break them over the course of just a few years. As much as I like the ideal of the family farm, I'm not sure it is, and not sure it ever was a good way to make a living (outside some exceptions).