Successful Farmers The University of Minnesota has a database of 3500 producers that they've studied trying to answer the question,… why are some farmers more profitable than others. In this part of the economic cycle, what are profitable producers doing differently from those who may be sliding into financial troubles? Dale Nordquist is the associate director of the U. Of M's Center for Farm Financial Management and he has provided some answers. “It's not age. We found that younger producers are doing very well on average, so the beginning producers are really performing pretty well. Maybe with some help, obviously from from the older generation, but they're they're not really a problem group. It's not really size related. We see struggles in both the the smaller producers and the larger producers. And of course, if there's problems with large producers, that gets multiplied.”