DFA will have a new CEO starting January 1. He’s Rick Smith and he will succeed retiring chief executive Gary Hanman.

Smith, who currently serves as DFA’s president and chief operating officer, will assume the role of CEO on January 1, 2006. “We are delighted to have a proven dairy leader like Rick Smith to take DFA into the future,” said Tom Camerlo, chairman of DFA’s board of directors and a dairy farmer from Florence, Colo. “He understands the dairy industry, the DFA organization and, most importantly, the priorities of the dairy farmer members whom he serves.”

Smith entered the dairy industry in 1982 when he joined Dairylea Cooperative, Inc. (Dairylea) as vice president and general counsel. In 1988, he became CEO of Dairylea, the Northeast’s leading agricultural service and milk marketing organization with 5.5 billion pounds of milk marketed annually for 2,500 dairy farmer-members.

You can hear what DFA Board Chairman Tom Camerlo has to say about Rick here.