Introduction

Understanding managerial decision-making is difficult.Understanding farmers’ decision-making is alsodifficult, but is complicated by the fact that farmmanagement decisions are affected by and contributeto unique environmental uncertainties. In thiscontext, ‘environment’ can be interpreted literally.What farmers do is affected by the physicalenvironment, including the quality of the soil,weather conditions and drought, as well as howfarmer actions affect the environment, for instance,through environmental degradation and climatechange.

Like managers in other businesses, farmers makeinvestment decisions, such as what and how much toplant, based on expectations of future marketconditions. Farmers have to consider competitionfrom other farmers, many of whom happen to be theirneighbours. They must negotiate deals with seed,chemical and other farm input suppliers, andcontract with buyers of their crops and livestock.They need to understand complex governmentregulatory and tax requirements, many of which areunique to agriculture. Farmers must also contendwith evolving social norms and expectations aboutwhat farmers do and how they fit into the fabric ofsociety.

Like business owners who face ethical challenges in thedecisions they make, farmers are not immune toethical pressures and problems. However, the complexcombination of environmental, market, regulatory,personal and social forces impacting on farmers cancreate significant and unique pressures on them,pressures that can translate into major ethical andlegal lapses and result in food crimes. Theseethical challenges of farming are manifested in theactivities and decisions of farmers that violatemoral and ethical standards of right and wrong.

What are the ethical challenges that farmers face?Where and how do they arise? To what extent are theysimilar to and different from the ethical challengesthat non-farming business professionals face? Whileit is not possible to answer adequately all of thesequestions, this chapter provides a general overviewof the conditions that affect the propensity ofbusiness professionals to engage in unethicalconduct, and relates them to the ethical challengesthat farmers face. It also presents a typology ofethical challenges in agriculture and a discussionof unique fault lines – that is, pressures andconstraints — existing in farming that can lead tofood crimes perpetuated by farmers.