When Farmers Offend: Toward Expanding the Concept of Green Collar Crime

• In Event: Examining the Role of Farms in Crime and Animal Abuse

Abstract

There is an emerging literature about crimes and harms committed by those who grow food and raise livestock. Previously, the agriculturalist as offender was virtually ignored by mainstream criminology, and has only recently been considered by rural scholars as well. Yet, in the U.S. and other advanced economies, farms have transformed from small scale production units based on labor intensive strategies to large scale production based on machinery and chemicals. Even though agriculture remains family owned and managed, it is much more corporatized than in the past. This paper reviews the scattered literature on farmers as offenders, and points toward both empirical and theoretical considerations for future criminological scholarship on “Green Collar” crime, a concept previously limited to environmental crime.

Author

• Joseph Donnermeyer, Ohio State University