Digging the Dirt: Food Crimes in the Governance of Fair Trade

Dr. Low was granted Research and Professional Development funds for a research project that examines the issues of food crimes by using an exploration of the governance of the fair trade movement.

The fair trade movement is arguably one of the most successful social movements of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The largest of the three major networks of fair trade organizations encompasses 1200 producer organizations has grown to serve more than 1.65 million farmers and farm workers in over 70 countries with global sales of €7.3 billion in 2015. We suggest that fair trade has been an ongoing and developing response to the broad conceptualization of food crimes developed by Croall (2007). This paper represents the first application of the food crimes lens to study the fair trade movement.