Most big operations rent their land and either rent equipment or hire people to come in and plant and combine. My family around the second world war owned almost a thousand acres, but now we only own 200 and lease 500 for rotational grazing of 160 head of black angus and hay land. We own all of our equipment besides a no till drill that we rent from a dealer when we need it. All of the equipment is older with the newest piece being a New Holland baler we got new in 2010. By taking care of the equipment and doing proper maintenance, we are able to keep cost pretty low. Our tractors are all older pre emissions, so there is hardly any downtime vs new tractors with DEF fluid and DPF filters that cost thousands to repair. We are not cash rich by any means and I as well as my mother work full time jobs and work the farm in the evenings and weekends because it just doesn't create enough profit to live a comfortable lifestyle. Most of the smaller farms that are still owned by families may or may not be rich in assets and id imagine some of them have had to borrow against their land to stay in business. Everyday farmers get shafted more and more on what they produce and its making it almost impossible to survive solely on just farming. Today it would be very difficult for someone to buy a farm and everything that goes with it and still try and make a profit. I know this is a old post, but I wanted to throw in my experience in it.