The guy across the road from me, the “real” farmer, has 90 acres. He seems to do ok. He runs old tractors, and he lives in a simple one story brick house, so he isn't living large. His land was placed in the local agricultural preservation program, which means it can't legally be developed, and hence cost him a lot less than what would otherwise have been the going price in this area.
He makes money by raising hyper-local, organic specialty row crops on a subscription basis to extremely wealthy households in the Washington DC suburbs. That's a sustainable business plan, but only for a very small number of farmers. It's only possible because he was able to buy a farm at an extreme discount in a rapidly gentrifying area that is now one of the wealthiest counties in America and is getting wealthier by the year. If he was in Iowa that whole business plan falls apart.
This means that rural areas will continue to depopulate and that farming will either be industrial or bespoke.
There are plenty of very positive stories about significant profits on less than five acres, even less than one acre. I'd like to hear your take on it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbHwAfHQA9M