It's also low compared to the farmers around here which do quite well in good years It seems unfair to look at a farmer's peak income and say that they are doi

It's also low compared to the farmers around here which do quite well in good years It seems unfair to look at a farmer's peak income and say that they are doing well. Of my 5 uncles that owned farms, all but one had to give up their farms because they couldn't make a living -- now they work on corporate owned farms (which includes their former land) for mid-range pay for the area (which is much lower than tech-industry pay). A few lean years can put a farmer so under water that they can't recover. The one uncle that still runs his farm (well, he's mostly retired now, his daughter and her husband do most of the work) managed to survive because he had two strokes of luck - he sold some land to a developer for a good profit and he has some natural gas wells on his property, as part of the "rent" for the well, he gets free gas so his energy cost is nearly zero for as long as those wells keep producing.