1980s when I worked for a bank, the rural branches I looked after all had rich and poor farmers on the books, some owned the land, some were tenants with succession rights, some were tenants of local authority owners and some were managers for investment companies.
The poor ones were always land owners or insecure tenants. One owned just shy of 150 acres in Buckinghamshire, ran an old Austin Landcrab & bought and fixed up tractors and kit from returns to expired lease deals.
Mixed farming with useful sales of beef and lamb and organic veg to the local wealthy. He bucked the subsidy system by sticking with crop rotation, just about held his own & fed the family.
A major road building project was nearby & he was offered £1k for permission to park machines & stores on a parcel of his land. He asked me for advice.
Talk about stacking the odds against the landowner! Their contract made him responsible for cleaning up or selling them the land for £100.
I wrote him a better contract & with various backhanders in brown envelopes, the contractor and the local authority started proceedings for compulsory purchase of the land. By chance, my local MP was PPS to the then PM so that plan got knocked on the head.
I was reported to my head office, so suitably hacked off wrote a right sod of a contract with a warning I'd go further if they didn't sign up. I earned a nice commission from the contractor & the farmer got £10k up front plus £100/month for 12 months & £150/month thereafter, plus full remediation of the land occupied and adjacent. Plus, they didn't get the prime site they wanted, but a slice of land with a lot of chalk near the surface.
I worked with some right scum bags, but did learn a lot of technical stuff that I have put to good use.