Specific farms may be able to take advantage of their position or specialization and use hand-tools to gain more value per-acre, but that kind of specialization cannot scale up to commercial scale where a farmer with a set of machines can profitably farm dozens of acres or more. They aren't putting as much care into each acre, but in the end it doesn't matter. And, if everyone was doing what the specialized teams are doing, then probably the market that feeds the specialization would collapse because now there's no restriction on supply and prices for the product would go down. This is just basic economics.
You make several outdated assumptions about farming in the USA that are based in 20th century models of agriculture. The entire sector is incredibly fragile in its present form, because every method is unsustainable.
Industrial agriculture is depleting soil fertility faster than it can be replaced. Topsoil has been decimated in the past 100 years. This is primarily due to tractor tillage and herbicides.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...
