A great amount of the people entering agriculture today do not come from the farm. They have good business skills and computer skills, but they do not have the basic knowledge of farm tools and how to use them. It Yourself, Wear It Out, Use It Up, and Make It Do certainly apply to the small farmer who cannot afford the fixed costs of equipment used infrequently on the farm. The small farmer's biggest limiting factors for success are time and capital. Capital can be saved with careful shopping.
Innovation also saves capital.
Two disks mounted on a cultivator frame can be used to till one row of corn or potatoes or widened out to establish a raised bed. With just a little imagination, shipping crates can be effectively turned into housing, feeders, fencing and other projects at little or no cost to the farmer. How a farmer markets his or her crop can also affect the equipment he needs. The four problems a farmer faces are weather, pestilence, price, and government. Direct marketing requires no machinery and value adding usually requires minimal machine investments.