Older 12 row, 22-inch equipment can be bought in sugar beet country and often a chore tractor can be modified for row cropping for a few acres. But for large acres newer commercial equipment is needed. Another challenge is finding skilled labor that has the training and smarts to operate this gear. A few years back, a careless operator wiped out a stand of breeder seed when his sprayer was not following the tractor properly, not an uncommon event. Going out with smaller toolbars does eat up the hours.
Timing is critical for many operations.
More than once we couldn't complete a tillage operation because of wet weather and too many acres to do. For many cropping farms it is seeding and harvest. For us it is interrow tillage and spraying that gives us grey hair. As well there is some uniqueness to interrow spraying to the ag industry, and finding good advice about using a certain chemical with a certain drop nozzle in a given crop is hard to do. Another challenge for us are the stones on some quarters.