And Germany is tiny compared to the US.

A farm in Germany is how far of a drive from the nearest city?

In the US you could drive 10 hours from a farm to get to the nearest large city. Suburbs and tiny cities are what farms need to survive.

Tiny overstates it. I think ~30% of the size.

I get your point about small cities, but suburbs? They are attached to larger cities, so they may take the drive down from 10 hours to maybe 9.5. How does that make that much of a difference?

Yes, farms need market access. But that market does not have to be a sprawling suburb, it can be a decently dense town or city. Also, market access is relative depending on product. Farmers concentrating on crops like wheat and corn don't care about the distance to cities, as their product is traded globally. For fresh produce, distance is a real concern, but on the other hand you don't need a lot of land to fulfill the need of even large cities. You could conceivably provide most fresh produce from inside city limits if urban planning would see this as necessary. Production/acre for something like tomatoes is really huge, depending on the methods used.

Except that in most German towns outside the tiny center where almost everything closes between 4 and 6 pm with exception of supermarkets, everything else seems to require a car or at least 30 minute cycling, with most buses ending at 8pm.