There’s an exceedingly strong cultural drive to keep farmland “in the family” even if it impoverishes or otherwise inconveniences the descendants.

I had a coworker once who lives in this region and owns some amount of farmland in a similar situation. He could have sold it and moved his family to <insert modest paradise here, in his case Florida> at any point; even now I think it would be easily done, if not as easy as in the past. But of course he still lives there, immiserating himself to keep the farm barely viable and working a second job to provide a livable salary.

Why? Because selling it would offend his dead father’s pride.

I used to date a woman in Germany who was trying to shake her farm roots for corporate aspirations. I didn't understand German that well but apparently other Germans could tell her accent. No different than someone from Appalachia being assumed to be uneducated, and how we debate the validity of poor English versus "dialect". It seemed like an unnecessary distraction to her life.

Eventually I met the father, and he was big into the farm life. running a small but industrial farm. I still didn't understand, he mentioned a love of feeding people, why is he doing this and why is he putting his family through this, my girlfriend was translating the things he said but I didn't get it, so I assumed language barrier. They did seem to be respected in the town though by all the shopkeepers. But given the options, they were quite liquid and wealthy, it seemed contrived.

Then I met the grandfather, now, I liked that guy. The grandfather had a diversified portfolio, golf ranges, restaurants, farms, different siblings and children running them all. There was no "I just love feeding people" bullshit, just revenue streams and property. The farmer son just got the short straw and had to adopt that persona.

Yeah, that rings true. I assumed when asking my question that this was something to do with culture, identity, and social status within a particular community. In this case the culture (rural America) is alien to me. But I can understand the idea of making economically "irrational" choices for reasons to do with pride or culture or identity, though in the world I grew up in it's more things like become a classical musician, environmental scientist, or spend 6 years doing a humanities PhD. On the other hand, none of those things involve the allocation of $5M of capital, so there does seem to be something different about this kind of life choice.

There's opportunities for the right person out there, I've seen it a few times - young man (or woman) who wants to run a farm or rural business or whatnot, either marries into the family or becomes "basically adopted" and inherits the business or farm.

You have tons of businesses that are viable (produce enough money to support a family) as long as you never load it with debt; because they do NOT produce enough to support a family and the debt load that would come from buying it.

So they're unsaleable.

I know someone in a similar position. Had a spirit more meant for tech, pursued it, but has to keep thinking about what to do about the family farm business. I think it's the same for any kind of family business, there's a sense of failure if you're the generation to close it down.