Gary E. Hanman, Springfield, Missouri

The recipient of the AMDO Dairy Leadership Award for 1982 is Gary E. Hanman, executive vice president and general manager of Mid-America Dairymen, Inc., Springfield, Missouri.

Mr. Hanman is a member of numerous boards and committees concerned with the marketing of milk and its products. He also is president of the Mid-America Farms, Inc., the sales and marketing arm for Mid-America Dairymen; president of Mid-America Farm Lines, a transportation cooperative jointly owned by Mid-Am and 21 other cooperatives; and is on the board of directors of Home Town Dairies, Inc., of Iowa City, Iowa. In addition he serves on the board of directors and is president of Special Products, Inc., a wholly-owned ordinary business corporation of Mid-America Dairymen, engaged primarily in leasing dairy equipment.

He is a member of the board of directors of Interregional Service Corporation, with headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota, a leasing company owned by Mid-America Dairymen and other Midwestern agricultural cooperatives. He serves as a member of the board of directors of Western Food Processing, Inc., of Idaho Falls, Idaho, a specialty dehydration facility. He also has the responsibility to supervise the management of Wilsey-Bennett of Oklahoma, a butter printing and distribution company jointly owned by Mid-America Dairymen, Inc. and Associated Milk Producers, Inc., located in Oklahoma City.

Gary currently serves on the board of directors of National Milk Producers Federation and as a member of its executive committee. He also serves as chairman of the dairy committee of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives.

Gary Hanman was born January 30, 1934, on a general livestock farm in North Central Missouri. He attended a one-room rural grade school and graduated from the high school at Browning, Missouri. He studied at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he earned a B.S. degree in Agriculture in 1955 and a Masters degree in Agriculture in 1956.

Gary has come up through the ranks as a specialist in dairy marketing and working with farmer owned cooperatives. In 1956 he was employed by the Federal Milk Market Administrator in St. Louis, Missouri. He served on the staff there for eight years and was assistant market administrator at the time he left, on February 1, 1964, to become manager of the Square Deal Milk Producers Association at Highland, Illinois. Square Deal was one of the five dairy cooperatives that consolidated on July 1, 1968, to form Mid-America Dairymen, Inc., with headquarters in Springfield, Missouri. Hanman was named vice president of fluid marketing for Mid-America Dairymen at its corporate headquarters at the time of the consolidation.

On January 4, 1970, he was named executive vice president for marketing. On January 2, 1972, he was designated senior executive vice president of Mid-America Dairymen, and on March 18, 1973, he was named senior corporate vice president. On May 14, 1975, Hanman was named executive vice president and general manager of Mid-America Dairymen, Inc., the title which he currently holds.

Mr. Hanman presently lives in Marshfield, Missouri. He and his wife, Shirley, are the parents of four children.