this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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Farming is only fun if you already have enough money that you don't actually have to farm if you didn't want to.
Otherwise it's hard work for low pay that is very hard to buy yourself into if you weren't born with some land.
When they say the goal of many a software engineer is to become a farmer, it's quietly implied that you have to first make bank as a software engineer and then farm as a hobby while at least semi-retired rather than depending on it for survival.
I know people who are doing this and are happy. Half time spent farming, half time CEOing a software startup (not a silicon valley hustle culture 996 one though), and you get to take meetings in your own personal forest.
This Lemming rural-s.
It's certainly hard work and low pay (compared to software engineering) in many cases, but it is rewarding.
As for the land, that really depends on the scale and the country.
At the end of the day, farmland is going to earn a similar basic return to whatever other capital asset, and while farming labour isn't unskilled the amount of people raised in it means it earns like it is.
Nobody who says this is picturing manhandling half-dead chickens, and it's usually someone white who isn't going to move to the mountains of Ethiopia to farm subsistence crops and cocoa. That pretty much leaves something land-intensive.
I did talk to someone here who made it work with ranching, but ranching is definitely not a good earner right now, and a lot of people are leaving the industry. Modern crop farming seems a lot like a desk job on wheels. Mainly, I think people just want space and fresh air, and have no idea what rural life is actually like.
It's always a balance of what you can afford, what you want to do, and what your market can bare. You may love raising chickens, but eggs will almost never pay off. I love hot peppers. But I can't get by growing just that. It is skilled and complicated for sure.
I don't know where you live but round here if you want to raise chickens you gotta first buy some chicken quota (I am serious).
So you are in the hole before a bird lays its first egg.
I'm in Japan. It's not worth it on my scale to even try. I do plan to get chickens for our eggs (and bonus bug eating and compost helping), but otherwise I'm just in the veg business. I have full English support and website which helps me find my market