Kristine Ranger of Northeast Michigan Healthy Food Initiative

Kristine Ranger has used her consulting and coaching skills to provide services to Northeast Michigan’s small farms and farms across the Midwest for over 25 years

Agriculture has been a part of Kristine Ranger’s life since birth. As the daughter of a farmer, Kristine grew up the middle child of 11 kids in Barton City, a community situated in the center of Alcona County. Kristine says her father, who was also in the forestry business at a sawmill, was the person who first influenced her interest in agriculture. She worked at the sawmill until she went to college at Michigan State University.

“I went to Michigan State thinking I was going to be a vet and realized that organic chemistry and I didn’t get along,” she says. “I changed my major to animal husbandry, and a very wise advisor asked if I had thought about teaching. Growing up, we used to play school, and I was always the teacher. I got a double degree in animal science and agriculture and natural resources education.”

After graduation, Kristine’s career path took her to South Dakota for four years, where she says she was among a handful of female ag teachers in the entire state. She returned to Northeast Michigan to work as a regional rep for Michigan Farm Bureau for a couple of years before meeting her husband and moving back west. Kristine and her husband raised their children in Minnesota, where Kristine also launched her consulting business.

A decade later, it was the right time to return to her home state.

“When I relaunched in Michigan, Michigan Food and Farming Systems (MIFFS) was really active in the food system arena,” she says. “I did some consulting work with them, and it really broadened my horizons to look at both agriculture and food. I co-led a national ‘Buy Local’ campaign that Michigan did with other states under a Kellogg grant, and that also started me on the journey of considering both how we connect local farmers to consumers, and how do we connect consumers to their local food?”

Kristine says it took her several years to build relationships with the farmers in Northeast Michigan, but she knew there was a lot of potential. “There was some hometown loyalty,” she says. “I kind of always knew there was something in Northeast Michigan, but that it was underserved and under-resourced. It was going to take a lot of time and effort to make something happen in that area.”

Thanks to Kristine, things did start to happen. In 2018, she received a small seed grant from the Center for Regional Food Systems to start a food policy council. There was so much local interest that the community developed a Northeast Michigan Food and Farming System, a network built on the idea of helping consumers understand where their food comes from and developing new markets. The venture became a casualty of the pandemic a couple of years later.

Kristine pivoted and began working with John Fisk, a former MIFFS staff person; the pair received their first large grant through Blue Cross. With her background in agriculture and his background in food hubs and systems, the pair are making a big difference in their work in Northeast Michigan.

Kristine also recognized a significant need within the agriculture industry for human resources support. She took a class on HR and received a scholarship from the Center for Community and Economic Development at Michigan State to research the status of HR in agriculture in rural areas. After convening an advisory group, Kristine conducted research on the topic and wrote a white paper, “Improving Soft Skills in Agriculture with Hard Core Strategies.”

“I really started to understand what a huge need that is in the entire ag industry,” she says. “I did some work on dairy farms around HR issues and had some limited success with that. It's such a hard sell to go to a farmer and say, ‘you need to change what you're doing here in terms of your hiring and retention practices and how you manage people.’ Farmers are very private. It’s hard to get them to talk about those issues because they don't want to share what their practices are. They don't want to share what their failures have been, but they need to if they want to improve their reputation and become an employer of choice.”

Kristine continues to apply her HR skills to small farm situations, assisting with effective leadership, strategic planning and succession planning, the latter of which she says is an area of great need as farmers consider the transition of their businesses.

Most recently, Kristine is the co-lead of the Northeast Michigan Healthy Food Initiative and has joined the Advisory Board of Annie’s Project, a national non-profit focused on education for farm women; she serves as the state coordinator/facilitator on behalf of Michigan. She is also moving forward with farm-to-school and risk management programming and initiatives for the Northeast Michigan region under USDA grants and expanding access to local food through additional pop-up market sites with funding from Michigan Health Endowment Fund. 

Being from a large family, Kristine says she didn’t get to explore Michigan growing up – but thanks to her consulting work, she’s more than making up for it.

“Finally, I have had the opportunity, probably in the last 15 years, to really experience the state,” she says. “I love camping and hiking. One of my goals is to hike all the trails at all the state parks. I went to the Porcupine Mountains to camp. I did the Bridge Walk this past year for Labor Day. Here I am, 67 years old, and finally did the bridge walk!”

Like most Michiganders, Kristine also loves the change of seasons, and as a self-proclaimed “outdoor person,” she says she’s trying to experience the great outdoors as much as she can, as long as her knees hold out. It’s her love for the outdoors and early roots on the farm that have led her to create a lasting impact on the livelihoods of farmers today. 

“It was my dad's influence that created that love of the land in me, and I still have that in me,” she says. “My brother still owns the farmland in Alcona County; it's deer hunting land now, but those emotions and values still run deep.”

Learn how the MEDC is supporting the state’s agribusiness industry.

Follow the NE Healthy Food Project on Facebook to learn more about Kristine’s latest venture.