OCM hires Eby as executive director

The Nebraska-based Organization for Competitive Markets has hired Mike Eby as its executive director.

Eby is a seventh-generation Pennsylvania farmer whose family has been on their land for 206 years.

In 1999, Eby purchased his father’s purebred Holstein herd and milked cows with his wife and four children for 17 years. After selling the dairy cows, Eby and his family transitioned to a red Angus cow/calf operation and also grow corn, beans and wheat.

Eby will continue his role as the chairman of the National Dairy Producers Organization, a farmer member nonprofit that works to ensure dairy marketing cooperatives operate for the mutual benefit of producer-members.

OCM noted that Eby has initiated antitrust litigation with fellow dairy farmers against Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), alleging that DFA, Dean Foods, and Dairy Marketing Services engaged in anti-competitive milk marketing practices for 12 years that harmed the farmer-members of the cooperative. The suit is pending in U.S. District Court in Vermont and has brought forth an amicus brief from the Justice Department, which argued in favor of the dairy farmers. F

–The Hagstrom Report