We are a smallholding, farming under 20 acres on our 32-acre holding.
One of the local farmers used to do all the small agricultural contracting jobs for the smaller farms and smallholdings hereabouts - haymaking and all associated jobs, topping, harrowing and rolling, mucking out and muck-spreading, hedge-trimming, bashing in fence posts, etc etc. He had the kit for his own farm and could earn some extra income from hiring himself out with it.
He’s recently taken a full-time job so we are still working out how to get all our tractor work done! We found someone else local to make our small-bale haylage, and he was great, but we haven’t got all the other work sorted yet.
We do have our eyes open for a small 4wd tractor, but there would still be some jobs we’d sooner buy in. Baling hay and wrapping it if needed for two, but it would be great to be able to do our own woofling and topping and so on.
Where I farmed up north, on a Cumbrian hill farm, we farmed 450 acres and had three modest tractors of our own. We used the local Agri contractor for mowing, baling, wrapping, muck spreading, hedge-trimming. Over time, we were having to adjust field entrances as the Big Boys’ Toys got bigger and bigger, would no longer fit through 10’ gates, etc. The problem they had, especially in such a wet part of the country, was everyone wanted the grass cut and the hay baled in the same very small windows of time, so bigger and faster machinery was the solution - but not if your gateways couldn’t take the bigger kit!
So it would depend on where you are and who does what locally, but there could well be a niche for more modestly-sized equipment, yes. Whether you’d really make sensible money, though, given that the smaller kit takes more hours, I’m not sure.