A former dairyman was selected as the top producer in the annual Top Producer magazine award.

TOP PRODUCER, the business magazine of agriculture, honored Chad Olsen, 37, a farmer and custom harvester from Hendricks, Minn., as the national winner of its annual Top Producer of the Year Awards at a banquet in Chicago on January 19th.

Olsen survived the devastation of a fire that consumed his 48-cow dairy herd and barn, leaving him $100,000 in debt at the age of 22. To recover from the loss, he worked odd jobs and then launched a custom harvest business in 1993. Today, Olsen Custom Farms harvests 79,000 acres from Texas to Canada, not including approximately 5,000 acres he farms at home in Minnesota, plus a trucking and cattle business.