Successful Illinois Grain Farms

Illinois extension has studied factors leading to success in Illinois grain farms.  Here's the bottomline:

In summary, this series on farm performance has shown that grain farms which achieve higher yields and receive higher prices earn greater returns consistently over time and within any given crop year when examining the 2005 to 2009 period. On the cost side, farms earning higher returns also have lower costs of production, and there is a wider gap in power costs between the top and bottom performance groups compared to direct input costs. In terms of farm size and tenure position, larger operations with more total acres and fewer acres rented under fixed cash rent agreements are characteristics of the higher return groups.[my emphasis]

 It goes on to say that most of the success is the ability to achieve higher yields; good marketing doesn't account for much of the differences among farms. Once again, IMHO farmers are price takers, not price makers.