Iowa doesn't have many true small family farmers any more. By small family farmers, I mean making it on a section of land or less. If you're not farming 1000 acres, you're not going to be doing it for long. Many of the farmers I know (and it's a lot of farmers - rural Lutheran pastor) often have side gigs. Selling seed, doing custom equipment, some cattle, or their spouse also has a small business that they help her with. Farming involves a whole lot of money - sure, 275 bushel corn sound great when you have 5000 acres in corn and the price is $5/bushel. That's $6,875,000. But when you start calculating inputs of fuel, equipment, seed, rent (not many own all of the land they farm), insurance, payroll for farm employees, fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide, fungicide, etc., the inputs start eating into that profit very, very quickly - especially when rent prices have climbed along with ballooning land prices. I always consider that farming is a big gamble. It depends on a lot of good planning and preparation and all of that can be for naught with a single hail storm or stretch of 4 weeks of no rain and 90 F temps at just the wrong time. At the same time, farmers appear to be some of the wealthier members of the community because, if they own the land and are good at business, there is some serious profit happening in years with good crops and their tax accountant highly recommends the purchase of expensive, new equipment in years with high profits so that the equipment costs can help reduce their tax liability on the grain profits. There are sooooo many moving parts to running a successful farming operation that it really is a highly skilled vocation which requires constant learning and updating.
