I was referring to the capital intensive nature of the business. My fairly lucrative programming career is what keeps my farm operating. Being able to leave programming to farm is a long way off for me yet.
If you have family willing to hand down the business or already independently wealthy, then maybe leaving programming to farm is more realistic.
I have noticed that the agriculture market has seemed to settle on an average of about 2-3% ROI. Meaning, for every $1 you invest in your farm business, you can expect to get 2-3¢ back each year profit-wise. On average. Some years you will make more, some years you will pay to get rid of your product. Right now is closer to the latter of those two.
If you come to farming with $2-3M cash in hand, you will typically be in pretty good shape (~$60K average yearly income based on the above assumptions), assuming you have figured out the management aspects. But most don't have $3M lying around doing nothing, and that's the real challenge. The way forward seems to be to hold another job (programming in my case), and take all you can from that job and put it into the farming business until you have built up enough capital that the farm becomes self-sustaining.
It's a long road, but hopefully worth it. As they say, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.
If you have family willing to hand down the business or already independently wealthy, then maybe leaving programming to farm is more realistic.