The farmer who was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1978 as "The New U.S. Farmer" has died in car-farm truck accident.

Pat Benedict, Sabin, Minn, 76, died in a head-on crash with a grain truck Wednesday. The accident occurred on a county highway not far from his family's farm headquarters. The truck driver, who was not injured, told authorities that the car Benedict was driving suddenly swerved into the oncoming lane. Authorities are trying to determine whether a medical problem may have caused the accident.

Thirty years ago, Time described Benedict – who then farmed 3,500 acres and had a half million dollar line of equipment -- as "archetypal of the farmers who make U.S. agriculture the nation's most efficient and productive industry and by far the biggest force holding down the trade deficit. … Large farmers, like Benedict, who know how to use credit and the latest in agricultural science, are gaining an ever greater share of the market. They produce most of the food that the U.S. eats and almost all that it sells to the world."

Benedict was former chairman of the American Crystal Sugar Company. He helped build the Pro Gold corn processing plant at Wahpeton, N.D., and was instrumental in helping launch several other value-added ag cooperatives.