College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics

Professor  H. Christopher (Chris) Peterson is appointed in the tenure system and is the Homer Nowlin Chair of Consumer-Responsive Agriculture and professor of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State University. Dr. Peterson has his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University and his MBA from the Harvard University Graduate School of Business. 

Dr. Peterson serves on the state advisory board for the Michigan Small Business and Technology Development Centers and the Executive Committee of the Sustainable Michigan Endowed Project. He has served as an outside director on three major cooperative boards, and on the international advisory board of TransForum, a public/private consortium dedicated to scientific and practical discoveries to enhance the sustainability of agriculture in the Netherlands and globally.

His research and outreach activities span the areas of strategic management, value-added ventures and differentiated product development, cooperative theory and financial practices, entrepreneurship, business innovation, the emergence of the bioeconomy, vertical coordination strategy, and supply chain management.  Dr. Peterson also does “futuring” to craft scenarios for the evolution of the agri-food and bioeconomy systems.  Based on this work, sustainability is a growing area for his research and outreach.  Rounding out his scholarly interests is a focus on qualitative research methods, most especially case study research.

Watch Chris Peterson's Final Seminar titled "When all problems are Wicked, what are scholars to do?"

Peterson Seminar from Evans Media Group-Michigan on Vimeo.

Watch Chris Peterson's Retirement Reception Program

Peterson Reception Final 1080 from Evans Media Group-Michigan on Vimeo.

Research and Outreach Interests

• Strategic management of agribusinesses, including globalization strategies, supply chain management, cooperative finance, scenario analysis, and strategic planning methods and practices
• Product-oriented agricultural marketing, and cooperative strategic and financial management
• Entrepreneurship and venture development
• Sustainability with related work on multi-stakeholder engagement and trans-disciplinary knowledge creation

SMEP Bio:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40CudChfOqA