Defining rogue farmers in a rural context

The concept of the ‘rogue farmer’ was first coined in 2004 by Robert Smith (see suggested readings) in a United Kingdom context in his study into the illegal halal trade/ smokies to refer to farmers who knowingly and willingly engaged in criminal entrepreneurship in its many forms, including immoral, amoral and illegal for financial and reputational gain.

The genesis of the concept was in turn influenced by William Baumol’s notion and theory of ‘productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship’ (1990) which posited that not all forms of entrepreneurship are productive and legal and that some are in fact unproductive (in that they may be illicit, immoral or amoral and sit in the grey zone) and destructive (and are palpably criminal). The rogue farmers in the study knowingly participated in criminal acts from the theft of sheep to illegal slaughter of the sheep for human consumption despite it being patently illegal. The rogue farmers acted in a parasitical manner by generating a parallel income stream which lay outside of the official taxation system. The term rogue was applied because the farmers were believed to be acting as ‘rogues’ whilst still maintaining their identity as farmers. The clear inference was that they were not criminals in the true sense of the word.

In a number of follow up studies the concept was developed and expanded by Smith and McElwee (2014) and Sommerville into the theory of ‘illegal rural enterprise’ (IRE) to differentiate it from ordinary criminality carried out by farmers. In these studies, the type of crimes considered and investigated were split into ordinary crimes and IRE crimes. The former included the theft of livestock, theft of farm plant and equipment, renting out sheds for criminal purposes such as storing stolen property or drug cultivation. The latter included crimes such as hosting dog-fighting events, puppy farming, various food fraud offences and the illegal slaughter of animals as a service. This list is not exhaustive.

The twin theories of the rogue farmer and IRE were developed to include the notion of ‘insider crime’ because it was apparent that many of the crimes committed by so-called rogue farmers required a modicum of rural social capital and farming knowledge and skills in their perpetration.