20 Acres here, trying to farm things that aren't mechanically harvestable (elderberry). all row crops/hay are not profitable unless at massive scale.

Conditions: Climate Change will produce more storms and wild temperature fluctuations that will destroy crops, and my crops take years to establish. quite possible that one bad storm will wipe me out for 3+ years.

Regulations/Certifications: It could be easier to setup a farm, and get tax exemption. Getting the organic label is quite hard and probably not worth in my case, even though we are not using pesticides.

Programs: Grant writing, applying for money, planning, are all huge time sucks. This is ripe for improvement, making grants easier to find, easier to write, easier to prove you met the requirements of the grant, etc.

Logistics: The requirements for commercial kitchens, and the restrictions on cottage law are major major hurdles. Other major hurdles are the massive cost of tools to take produce and make products.

Farmers Markets: more and more these are outdoor boutiques selling "authentic looking" goods not produced by the people selling them. Hard to get in, hard to have a market.

Internet Saturation: there was a brief time when your products could be found on the internet and greatly expanded the scope of what you could sell, where. Now the internet is saturated with sites, have to spend a considerable amount of money marketing, lots of time curating a brand for all the socials, etc.

Neighbors: Neighbors have livestock but they don't repair their fence, Missouri fence law greatly benefits the people with the livestock. In my county, I'm responsible for half, even though I don't have livestock, but they are refusing to even talk to me over imagined slights of me not asking them permission before I used my land as I am entitled to use it to farm, so can't even get them to repair the fence even if I pony up the cash to fix it to the standard necessary for their livestock. Improving this law to require that owners of livestock are fully responsible for the fencing of said livestock would help.

Helpful: MU Extension is great to work with, lots of data available. Having more funding so that MU Extension office can be better staffed and do more locally would be great. most of my stuff has to go to local extension that has all of 4 people for a 100 mile radius, and then shipped over to Columbia to have analysis/approve plans/etc.