The guy running two head of cattle on 1 acre just so he can claim to be a "farmer" for the tax benefits will never have a profitable operation.

Not quite true. He can take that 2 head of cattle to the bank for a loan for 40 acres and that will make money - not a living but a profit. Then a few years latter more land and now he is a farmer.

i work with a number of people on that plan. It is an open question how many will complete it and become full time farmers.

Thing is you can't get an ag exemption without provable business. Not sure what that looks like elsewhere but here you have to do a minimum of $10k gross sales. As small as that number is it's surprisingly difficult to hit fucking around.