Major barrier right at the start: buying a little chunk of land is one thing, but a bunch of the stuff in step 2 will require very large capital outlays by the standards of the time—especially the mill.
There’s a reason automation didn’t catch on before the industrial revolution: capital was scarce and peasants were abundant. It wouldn’t be easy to actually produce crops more cost-effectively than peasant labor, when the peasant labor is absurdly cheap. Things like fertilizer could help, but even that will run into problems—people don’t like poop on their food, and chemical fertilizer/insecticide requires relatively complicated manufacturing facilities.
Major barrier right at the start: buying a little chunk of land is one thing, but a bunch of the stuff in step 2 will require very large capital outlays by the standards of the time—especially the mill.
There’s a reason automation didn’t catch on before the industrial revolution: capital was scarce and peasants were abundant. It wouldn’t be easy to actually produce crops more cost-effectively than peasant labor, when the peasant labor is absurdly cheap. Things like fertilizer could help, but even that will run into problems—people don’t like poop on their food, and chemical fertilizer/insecticide requires relatively complicated manufacturing facilities.