MSU Extension’s Nikki Rothwell named Cherry Industry Person of the Year

By Ross Boissoneau

Sun contributor

Nikki Rothwell didn’t grow up with aspirations to be the National Cherry Queen. She was too interested in bugs.

Nevertheless, the longtime director and educator at the Michigan State University Extension Office in Leelanau County found herself waving to the crowd as an honored participant in the DTE Energy Foundation Cherry Royale Parade. No tiara, though—instead, “I did get (to wear) a red jacket, like the Masters,” she says with a laugh, as winners of that golf tournament receive a green sport coat.

Rothwell was honored as the Cherry Industry Person of the Year at the 2025 National Cherry Festival. She grew up with an appreciation for science, which started on her family’s Kingsley-area farm. “I was always fascinated with insects,” she says. “We had an old boxelder tree in the driveway with small ladybugs, hundreds and hundreds of them. Crickets always fascinated me as a kid.”

Fast forward a few years, and Rothwell furthered her interest with studies at MSU, eventually landing a role as entomology graduate research associate at the Leelanau County extension office. In 2004, she was appointed the center’s district-integrated pest management educator. Six years later she was named center coordinator and district extension horticulture educator for Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula.

In her dual roles, she works directly with farmers, students, academics and anyone and everyone else interested in agriculture and the work that goes on at the center. She says the advancements in the science of growing and finding ways to help farmers make a living and keep their land are among the things that keep her engaged. Technology, including the use of drones, smart sprayers and even cell phones where those in the field can get immediate access to her and the center, are among the advances that help farmers stay on top of a changing world and economy. “The pace of change is faster,” Rothwell says.

The region has historically produced nearly half the nation’s supply of tart cherries and more than 80 percent of the state’s sweet cherry production. The center is a hub for integrated pest management, horticultural production and handling, value-added processing, marketing and farm financial management practices for sweet and tart cherries, wine grapes, apples, plums, hops and more.

She sees the challenges ahead for the farming community: climate change, worker issues, housing issues, pressure from land developers. “Farm transition is a big deal. The average age (of farmers) is getting up there. We have to keep farms profitable. If they don’t, they (may) sell the land.” Often the best farmland is also attractive to developers as homesites, with hillside water views, making the land more valuable to build homes on rather than continue farming.

“Climate change has added pressures and stressors. If the climate would just change, we’d deal with it,” she says. But she says the increasing variability of the weather means growers and researchers have a hard time keeping up. The weather is now more variable from week to week, year to year, even location to location. “In east Leland, (fruit grower) Jim Bardenhagen got over an inch of rain in two days. At the research center we got a quarter inch.

Rothwell and her husband, Dan, lived in Massachusetts before moving to Michigan, and she explains that the tick population was an issue there. “Now they’re here in Michigan. It feels like it’s harder and harder to make a living,” she says, citing diseases like brown rot in sweet cherries, fire blight in apples, pests like spotted wing drosophila, and cuts in funding to critical infrastructure such as NOAA. “Everyone gets their forecasts from NOAA, and they just shut the Marquette office.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Rothwell combines a sense of determination and unending curiosity in the face of the challenges confronting farming, traits that helped win her recognition from the cherry industry. “The recognition is quite humbling. It’s a prestigious group,” she says of previous winners. According to the festival’s website, the honor can be awarded to a grower, processor, marketer, educator, researcher or another professional connected to the industry, honoring them for their outstanding contributions to the cherry industry.

“It’s nice to be recognized. It means a lot to me coming from the industry, the growers,” Rothwell says. “When I started, I was an entomologist. Now (my role) is training, marketing, irrigation (consultant), counselor.”