If you are wanting to do it as a commercial venture, then livestock (particularly beef if you are in the US) is about the only way to go unless you can purchase vast tracts of land and the equipment to run it.
If you are considering vegetable farming commercially, don't unless it is an extremely boutique product like truffles or exotic mushrooms, the economies of scales are crushing. The other option that is still viable is small plot that produces and end product. e.g you own a vineyard but you are not selling grapes you are selling wine. You own a pepper farm but your end product is hot sauce. Those are still viable for small plot.
The best thing you can do with a decent tract of land is to plant it full of expensive hardwoods such as black walnut and occasionally prune the trees to promote straight growth for lumber.
I have 7 acres and I planted 4 of it with African Ebony, one of the most expensive woods in the world. They are not native to my area so there is no issue with harvesting them and they require little in the way of care. They will provide a nice cushion for my children when they mature given that a single tree is worth between $300,000 to $1,000,000 (at current market) depending on size and quality of lumber. I planted about 50 trees per acre. The math is pretty self evident and it is the best use of land agriculturally if you are looking to maximize profit via small plot agriculture.
My wife uses some of the other land for personal farming but that is her gig, I grew up on a farm (citrus) and after NAFTA swore I would never scratch a living out of dirt again. I told her she was on her own with the vegetable farming other than helping her with where to plot certain vegetables and when to plant them.
Aren't there stories where 30 years ago lots of people had the same idea and planted similar species, resulting in a price crash when the trees matured? I'm not a tree expert so don't know the species, but I feel like I heard something like that happening in the southeast.
How did you decide on your species and how do you know other people don't have the same thing in the ground right now?
Yes there where but that was mainly from timber stock which matures faster than true hardwood stock, if you are very young say in your 20's you could plant hardwood stock for retirement but generally hardwood stock foresting is a generational investment.
Some of the limitations on everyone planting is that most of these species are protected, so you have to be able to plant them in a similar environment where they are not native or you run the risk of having to pay impacts for every tree harvested. Others are land availability and the other is many people don't want to encumber their land for a return they personally will never see. Most of the stuff you hear about from 30 years ago where faster growing trees in the pine and oak families which you could see harvestable maturity in 10 (pine) to 20 (oak) years and while it did cause a price crash, those people did make money. Just not FU money.
Contrast this with any African blackwood and you are looking at 50 years minimum till maturity and possible as long as 100 year. I don't need the money (not that I am rolling in it) but it is generational insurance for my children and their grandchildren. For a little back story I own a house that sits on 7 acres on the ocean, I plan to will the house to my descendants and keep it in the family as a place to come back to and congregate, for all generations to use. The trees are the hedge that their will be money to support that vision, as well as provide for the family if need be.
That being said the whole thing could flop, but at least I planted some trees that are in serious danger of going extinct in their native habitat and my descendants will be in possession of some really resilient hardwood.
I mentioned this in another post on another topic but there was immigration reform in the 70's and 80's that opened up migrant work to the conglomerate farms. Which drove down prices most family farms where able to survive this onslaught but it kicked the legs out of any cushion they had. They then lobbied for NAFTA which allowed them to buy up tracks of farmland in Mexico that could not survive due to the new Mexican labor shortage created by the US workforce immigration reform, they then moved production to Mexico, drove prices down to an unsustainable level for small plot farmers, those farmers bankrupted, the conglomerates came in and bought up the small tracts that where now available, they then parceled those tracts together. Then they lobbied for more immigration reform and brought in workforce for their new US farms and that is why you do not see an American field worker nowadays. It's not because they do the jobs that we don't want. It's because they systematically destroyed the opportunity to do so and hold the cards to keep wages suppressed. If wages go up for farm hand work in the US, they shift scale to Mexico, if Mexico is unstable they shift scale to the US.
Most of the politicians on both sides of the isle where and are complicit in it because they view food pricing as a national security issue. The government has a vested interest in keeping the price of food and necessities low as people tend to become pretty violent when they are starving. That being said, it was a huge transfer of middle class wealth to large conglomerations.
Agriculture is a brutal, pitiless world of perfect competition, commoditisation, and winner-takes-all consolidation. There’s an old farming joke: “What would you do if you won the lottery? I’d farm until it was all gone”.
Start by getting your hands dirty. Grow some herbs in a window box or something simple. Once you reap the rewards, you may get the green-thumb itch and keep going. Getting started is easy: seed, dirt, water, sunshine
decide what kind of agriculture you want to do and check what is time and money requirements and seasonality is. Next step could be doing internship to see what it it feels like. There are many options from wwoofing to more job like situations.
Well and then you are ready to decide. Being small farmer is tough: not a lot of money and a lot of work, but it is rewarding by many means.
I personally decided to be in more play farm: few acres of vineyards, small wine production. It is still professional operation but I don't expect to be making full living off it.
Just do it, start getting your hands dirty as other said.
I personally started with composting and now I have a system where my food waste becomes forests, I eat lots of vegetable/fruits and I just throw the bucket on a specific place, cover with mulch and food grows. Avocado, papayas, limes, cucumber, tomatos, lots of them grow easily here just by doing this.
If you look for "agroforest academy" in youtube you may find a video course in english on this syntropic agriculture topic too.
