Academic connections to socio-economic movements: Are there lessons for Fair Trade from the co-operative movement?

Abstract

Historically, the co-operative movements and Fair Trade movements are amongst the most prominent socio-economic movements. One of the many features that they have in common is the close relations that both movements have had with academics, including the latters’ roles in the generation, transmission and application of knowledge related to these movements. This article examines the degree to which academics have been able to support these two movements through the generation of recognized bodies of knowledge, the development of fields of study and the establishment of knowledge management systems among practitioners, and raises the question of whether academics involved in the much newer Fair Trade practice might benefit by drawing upon lessons from the considerably longer history of academics involved in co-operatives studies, especially their organization of national and international scholarly associations.

Main article text

The Fair Trade movement is arguably the most important socio-economic movement of the last thirty-five years. Of course, it draws upon and overlaps with an older and more influential socio-economic movement with dates back to the early nineteenth century, the co-operative movement. The two movements have a variety of features in common including, among others, a commitment to supporting democratically controlled producer organizations as a basis for production, a critique of economic systems which leave small producers in structurally disadvantaged positions, the aspiration of developing and drawing upon bonds of solidarity (within producer organizations, and between producer organizations and local communities, business partners and consumers), and the prominent role that agricultural production has played in both movements. Another feature that the two movements share, one which is less obvious to most observers, is the relationships that these movements have had with academics and institutions of higher education.

While there is a long history of academics being involved in the co-operative movement as activists and practitioners, and a similar but shorter history in the Fair Trade movement, this article focuses on the formal roles of academics as they relate to the three primary functions of universities and colleges as apex knowledge institutions, namely the generation, transmission and application of knowledge (Reed, 2014). More specifically, it investigates the degree to which academics collectively have achieved three broad, overarching goals, namely, the establishment of a recognized body of knowledge, the development of a field of study and facilitating the capacity of practitioners to establish knowledge management systems.

In examining these three broad goals, an underlying purpose of this article is to identify the practices, strategies and organizational forms which have contributed to their achievement. In particular, the article investigates whether there are practical lessons that academics involved in the Fair Trade movement can learn from the more extensive experience of the co-operative movement. To this end, each section of the article begins with a summary of the success of co-operative researchers in achieving one of the three goals and an examination of the factors behind the success, and then proceed to the efforts and achievements of academics involved in the Fair Trade movement, and suggests some potential lessons from the co-operative experience, especially as regards the roles of formal scholarly institutes, associations and networks.

Knowledge Generation and Bodies of Knowledge

Academics have been involved in the study of co-operatives since the first half of the nineteenth century. As a result, many individual academics have had time to pursue the generation of knowledge, while collectively they have had greater opportunities to collaborate and learn what it takes to generate a comprehensive body of knowledge. The origins of the Fair Trade movement are commonly dated to 1988 with the formation of the first Fair Trade certification organization (although its roots in alternative trade precede that date by several decades). This more recent history has meant that individuals and small groups of academics involved in the study of Fair Trade have not only been able to draw upon the historical lessons from colleagues involved in the study of co-operatives (and other socio-economic movements, such as development studies), but they are also able to learn with their contemporary colleagues in these (frequently overlapping) fields.

A body of co-operative knowledge

The growth of a body of co-operative knowledge can be accounted for by increases in the degree of organization over the years, both by researchers within and across institutions of higher education. Initially, in the nineteenth century individual public intellectuals, social reformers and academics led the way. ¹ By the early twentieth century, with the development of agricultural extension programmes, research on co-operatives would be taken up more systematically, both by ministries of agriculture and in universities and colleges. By the mid-twentieth century dedicated co-operative research centres would become increasingly common. ² During the same period, co-operative activists promoted the formation of institutions of higher education exclusively dedicated to co-operatives. ³ These various developments provided the basis for the establishment of national ⁴ and international ⁵ co-operative research associations and networks, which helped to extend the analysis of co-operatives in two important ways. On the one hand, there was an expansion in the study of co-operatives beyond producer co-operatives to other organizational forms and beyond agriculture to other sectors. On the other hand, co-operative research became increasingly multi- and interdisciplinary. The net result of these two developments has been the generation of a comprehensive co-operative body of knowledge which draws upon research from a more complete range of business fields (management, governance, finance, HR, etc.), applied sciences (agronomy, forestry, land management, etc.), social sciences (economics, sociology, history) and interdisciplinary fields (development studies, environmental studies); covers a full range of co-operative forms (producer/worker, user, multi-stakeholder, etc.) and sectors (agriculture, finance, housing, manufacturing, services, etc.); and incorporates the analysis of co-operatives not only as economic enterprises, but as socio-economic movements.

The organization of researchers in national and international research associations has played an integral role in the consolidation of a body of co-operative knowledge. Their contributions derive from a variety of interrelated functions that these serve. First, they help to integrate individual researchers into a community of scholars. This contributes to research productivity not only by providing individual researchers with opportunities to interact with colleagues, but also by giving them legitimacy within their own institutions (and access to research funds and other forms of support). Second, bringing a wider range of researchers together facilitates the development of more comprehensive, interdisciplinary and strategic research agendas. Third, such associations and networks can facilitate greater access to research funding and support from national research funding councils, as well as from other institutions that have an interest in the work of co-operatives, including apex (national/sectoral) co-operative bodies, government agencies (e.g. regional economic development, international development, etc.), and private foundations and NGOs (operating in international development, community development, etc.). Fourth, insofar as co-op research bodies serve as key liaison points with apex co-operative (and other industry) bodies and government agencies, they may be able to influence how the latter collect, organize and make relevant data on co-ops available for research purposes. Finally, these organizations ⁶ (along with their research institute members ⁷ ) have historically played an important role in the dissemination of research through founding, operating and/or otherwise supporting dedicated academic journals.

Creating a body of Fair Trade knowledge

After the creation of the first Fair Trade certification body in 1988, knowledge generation by academics began to emerge slowly in the 1990s, before beginning a rapid period of growth in the 2000s with the expansion of Fair Trade markets and the development of a Fair Trade movement (Raynolds & Bennett, 2015). Initially, most of the work was undertaken by individuals or small teams of academics, often in collaboration with and building upon the work of practitioners. ⁸ Over time academics began to collaborate within research groups and institutes to develop research agendas and programmes more systematically. This occurred mostly in centres with broader mandates (e.g. sustainability, ⁹ agricultural studies, development studies, etc.), but a few dedicated Fair Trade research centres have also emerged. ¹⁰ With regard to the dissemination of research results, the first two major international conferences were organized by the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2002 and 2006, while an ad hoc steering committee (comprising academics and representation from Fairtrade International, the World Fair Trade Organization and the Fair Trade Advocacy Office) organized five subsequent Fair Trade International Symposia (FTIS). No formal national or international Fair Trade research associations have been formed, but several important forms of collaboration have been undertaken. These include the launch of a dedicated journal, The Journal of Fair Trade (which has an active and extensive advisory board), the founding of the Fair Trade Advocacy Office, the formation of an international network (primarily around the FTIS and the Journal), and the establishment of the Fair Trade Institute (a repository of Fair Trade publications and profiles of researchers). While significant progress has been made in Fair Trade research, it is probably most accurate to speak of an emerging corpus rather than a full-fledged body of Fair Trade knowledge. Indicators of this evaluation can be seen in the skewed nature of key features of the research. This would include over-representation in the literature by certain objects of study (e.g. ethnographies of producer organizations); certain economic sectors (namely, coffee); certain disciplinary perspectives (e.g. sociology among the social sciences, and marketing/consumer studies among business fields); and certain geographic origins of authors (especially Western Europe and North America) (Raynolds & Bennett, 2015).

Further and more rapid progress towards the development of an established field of study of Fair Trade might be made by incorporating lessons from the experiences and functions of co-operative research institutes and associations. One area in which the co-operative organizations have found success is working with other disciplinary (e.g. management, sociology, economics) and interdisciplinary (e.g. development studies, food studies, environmental studies) professional associations to organize sessions (panels, workshops, keynotes) on co-operatives in their national and international conferences. It is generally easier, for financial and professional reasons, for co-op (and Fair Trade) researchers, especially those from the Global South, to participate in such conferences, as opposed to dedicated co-op (and Fair Trade) conferences. A related practice among co-op researchers has been to expand their research focus to incorporate related organizations and practices (and conduct more comparative analysis). ¹¹ Another strategy of co-op research associations is to collaborate closely with practitioner organizations (e.g. apex national and international co-op bodies ¹² ) to incorporate research sessions into their major conferences, ¹³ a practice which has served not only to disseminate research results, but also to provide more opportunities for researchers to meet each other and network with practitioners. While many of these practices have been promoted to some extent by Fair Trade researchers, it is easy to imagine that having more formal organizational structures (at national and international levels), could hasten the process of consolidating a Fair Trade body of knowledge.

Knowledge Transmission and Fields of Study

As in the case of knowledge generation, academics have been involved in knowledge transmission about co-operatives for a much longer time than in the case of Fair Trade. This section first examines how a field of co-operative studies has been developed. It then contrasts that accomplishment with efforts to create a field of Fair Trade studies and explores potential strategies for further advancing these latter efforts.

A field of co-operative studies

As in the case of co-operative knowledge, the development of a field of co-operatives studies arose due to increased levels of organization. This has included: co-operation among academics (and practitioners) injecting co-op content in individual courses; departments establishing sections or modules on co-operatives in non-coop programmes (e.g. business, economics, development); and the creation of dedicated non-degree and degree programmes, both within and across academic institutions. Such co-operation has been facilitated in large part by the establishment of national, ¹⁴ regional ¹⁵ and international ¹⁶ associations and networks dedicated to co-operative education. As a result of such organization, there now exists a field of co-operative studies, which (a) boasts a variety of programme types (executive, diploma, degree); (b) covers a full range of issues (e.g. governance, strategy, management, accounting, operations, etc.), sectors (e.g. agriculture, finance, manufacturing, housing) and ownership models (e.g. producer, worker, consumers/users, multi-stakeholder); (c) has developed dedicated pedagogical materials (Côté, 2019; Zopounidis, Kalogeras, Mattas, Van Dijk & Baourakis, 2014); and (d) extends across numerous countries and all continents.

Scholarly associations dedicated to co-op education have played an integral role in the creation of a field of co-operative studies through the various functions that they play. First, as in the case of research, scholarly associations can more systematically connect co-operative educators. On the one hand, this involves facilitating opportunities for academics to connect and collaborate across institutions of higher education, while also providing legitimacy to individuals and small groups of academics in their efforts to promote co-op education within their own institutions. On the other hand, such associations also provide formal channels for collaboration between academics and educators in different co-operative sectors. Second, building upon the increased interaction among individual educators, co-op education associations have been able to support the establishment (and ongoing viability) of curricular initiatives. Within academia this has included: dedicated co-operative education programmes which have a broad scope ¹⁷ ; dedicated programmes which focus on specific economic sectors ¹⁸ and functional areas ¹⁹ ; as well as broader programmes in which co-operatives play prominent or dominant roles, such as community economic development ²⁰ and rural management. ²¹ Support by professional bodies has entailed, among other things, facilitating co-operation amongst academics across institutions in the design, operation (joint programmes, visiting faculty, programme reviewers, etc.) and promotion (e.g. through academic and sector networks) of such programmes. With regard to the co-op sector, professional societies may collaborate with sectoral actors on internal education programmes as well as public education initiatives. Third, academic associations, as key contact points both with educational institutions and practitioner organizations, have played a similarly important role in advancing co-operation on pedagogical initiatives, especially expanding experiential education opportunities (e.g. placement courses, site visits, study abroad programmes, etc.).

The creation of a field of Fair Trade studies

As in co-operative education, Fair Trade education occurs at different levels of organization, though not (yet) to the same extent. Individual professors can and do insert Fair Trade content into their classes (readings, guest speakers, site visits, assignments, etc.). At the next level, some programmes and departments offer dedicated modules or courses ²² on Fair Trade, though these are still quite rare. Unlike co-operatives studies, there do not yet seem to be any dedicated Fair Trade programmes (diplomas, certificates, degrees). ²³ A more common practice is for Fair Trade to be highlighted as a theme or topic in programmes, including as options for experiential education ²⁴ and topics in capstone projects and dissertations.

The organization of national and international Fair Trade scholarly societies could facilitate the development of a Fair Trade field of study in three primary ways (which have worked well for co-operative educators). First, by bringing individual educators together in a formal structure, such organizations would allow for regular contact and engagement about issues, while providing individual educators greater legitimacy and access to resources within their own institutions (e.g. to promote curricular initiatives). Second, such organizations can facilitate more systematic collaboration with other Fair Trade actors, specifically, producer organizations, certifying bodies and activists (including in Fair Trade School, Campus and Town initiatives). Third, closer connections among academics and practitioners can facilitate other activities integral to the establishment of a field of study. One important contribution could be the establishment of a comprehensive range of pedagogical materials, such as case studies (i.e. that extend across all Fair Trade product sectors and regions) and teaching modules (i.e. that examine Fair Trade from the perspective of different (sub)fields, such as finance, accounting, marketing, value chain management, ethic, public policy, development, etc.). Another important development would be the establishment of a wider range of experiential educational opportunities (e.g. speaker tours by producers, site visits to FT business and producer associations, placements and internships with Fair Trade businesses, establishing and operating Fair Trade businesses on campuses ²⁵ ). With regard to curriculum, there are possibilities for collaborating on the development of curriculum initiatives, (e.g. courses, diplomas, etc.), jointly offering such curricular initiatives (e.g. through faculty exchanges, student exchange programmes, study abroad courses, partnership agreements between universities) and making such programmes more widely available to students from across institutions (e.g. through on-line access to courses, permission agreements between universities and programmes, and, somewhat more controversially, platforms such as FutureLearn).

Knowledge Application and Knowledge Management Systems

Academics initially made their greatest contributions to knowledge application in the co-operative sector in rural areas of individual countries in the Global North, especially through agricultural extension programmes, but have also been involved for more than a century in efforts to extend such co-operation internationally (including through the International Co-operative Alliance and its promotion of the seven co-operative principles). In the case of Fair Trade, many producer co-operatives and associations have also received support from academics through participation in local agricultural extension programmes, but for a variety of reasons, have had to increasingly rely on international actors to aid their capacity-building efforts.

Support for knowledge acquisition and management in the co-operative sector

Academics have been engaged in supporting capacity-building by small producer organizations in a variety of contexts and institutional arrangements since the mid-nineteenth century. Historically, the first and most extensive form of involvement has been through the development of agricultural extension programmes, which have typically collaborated with regional and national government agencies. While such programmes emerged earliest, and on the largest scale in the US ²⁶ in the second half of the nineteenth century, other Northern countries would soon follow suit by the first half of the twentieth century. In the post-World War II era, Latin American governments and newly independent states in Africa and Asia would also establish extension programmes (Saravanan & Saravanan, 2008; Swanson & Claar, 1984), often receiving support from development agencies of Northern governments and Northern universities. ²⁷ Second, academics were also involved in extension programmes through co-operative colleges both during the colonial period and in newly independent states. Such institutions were initially developed and funded by the co-op sector, but over time also received funding from national governments and Northern development agencies (Moulton, 2022). In addition, academics have also become more frequently collaborators with development NGOs, especially as neo-liberal reforms have led these organizations to be increasingly more involved in the implementation of development assistance programmes sponsored by national and international governmental agencies, as well as by private foundations (Nega & Schneider, 2014).

Agricultural extension programmes have historically offered a variety of programmes to support farmers (e.g. adult literacy, agronomy, business strategy and marketing, etc.). At their best such programmes have been able to facilitate capacity-building in the form of knowledge management systems. Enabling small producers to systematically acquire, assimilate, transform and exploit knowledge, resulted in the formation of numerous co-operative groups and networks, featuring the formation of multi-tiered marketing and processing co-operatives (in agriculture, livestock, fishing), as well as supply co-operatives, financial co-operatives, food distribution and retail co-ops, etc. ²⁸ Such developments not only directly drove regional economic development in rural areas in a variety of Northern countries in the first half of the twentieth century, but also contributed to socio-economic movements which advocated for supportive public policy (often through participation in the formal political process). ²⁹

More recently, in response to changing dynamics (e.g. economic globalization, neo-liberal policy regimes, advances in technology, environmental degradation, etc.), academics have been supporting efforts by small producers and other actors to develop co-operative-based social and solidarity economies (Yi, 2023; Utting, 2015). These efforts, while still aimed at developing strong, locally controlled economies, emphasize the need for expanding bonds of solidarity in a global economy (through solidarity-based value chains), linking such bonds to address common concerns (e.g. around environmental sustainability, increased global economic concentration, etc.) and establishing new forms of engagement with public institutions and government (e.g. with decentralized planning initiatives, co-construction of public policy, social procurement programmes, etc.).

Support for knowledge acquisition and management in Fair Trade

In the Fair Trade movement, there is significant overlap with the co-operative movement in the area of providing support for knowledge acquisition. Some small producer organizations have benefitted from agricultural extension programmes in their efforts to enter Fair Trade markets. Frequently, however, funding for such programmes is inadequate and small producers are at a disadvantage in accessing such resources vis-à-vis larger producers with greater organizational capacity. For this reason, many small producer organizations also seek out support from international development NGOs (which are typically financed by Northern development agencies, international development banks and private foundations) as well as from co-operative foundations and banks. Some small producer organizations have benefitted greatly from such support, especially first movers in the Fair Trade movement. Such international support has enabled some producer organizations to develop knowledge management capacities and engage in economic upgrading activities (including the production, distribution and sale of final products in domestic and international markets). ³⁰ Most small producer organizations, however, have little access to such opportunities, and struggle merely to find buyers in the extremely complex and competitive Fair Trade commodity markets (Raynolds & Greenfield, 2015).

In the Fair Trade movement, individual and small groups of academics have played similar roles in supporting capacity-building for producer organizations as occurred in the co-op sector. At the local level, academics in the South (typically in business or agronomy) have supported small producer organizations through government-supported agricultural extension programmes. Northern academics have also actively supported capacity-building for producer organizations, but, mostly on an ad hoc basis, as they have had the occasion to participate as consultants, researchers and/or evaluators for the funding and/or implementation of development projects. ³¹ Individual and small groups of academics have also been able to build action research components into their own research projects (funded by national funding bodies or private foundations). While the support that academics have provided small producers to develop their knowledge acquisition capacity has not been insignificant, clearly there would be much greater potential if academics were to combine their individual skills and contacts through more formal and co-operative forms of organization, as has happened historically in the co-operative movement. Three major benefits in particular stand out.

In the first instance, greater organization would contribute to growing the pool of expertise and resources available to small producers, as contact between individual academics, and the legitimacy that organizations provide them, would enable them to more readily access potential (human and financial) resources in their home institutions, government development agencies, co-operative sectors, community organizations, etc. Second, greater organization could provide academics with a much more strategic role, moving beyond acting as participants in occasional projects to becoming dialogue partners in the formation of public policy and the design of research and training agendas. A formal organization, boasting expertise across a full range of academic disciplines and their subfields, would make academics more valued and influential partners, and enable them to inject strategic concerns about structural problems into the design of programmes and policies. Third, an international scholarly society could be a very valuable partner for national and regional producer organizations, in developing public policy and large-scale (action research) project proposals emphasizing social and economic upgrading which go across borders and product lines (Gereffi, 2019; Barrientos et al., 2012). This could include: supporting the replication of successful capacity-building projects to support fledgling organizations ³² ; developing public and government procurement policies; and promoting national and international commercial co-operation (including joint ventures) among producer organizations. With regard to the latter possibility, working with regional producer associations in Latin America, Africa and Asia through large action research programmes could result in two complementary developments. On the one hand, it could support the formation of more diverse and sustainable, locally controlled economies (as occurred through earlier co-operative movements). On the other hand, it could support the formation of more solidarity-based value chains (and brands collectively owned by national and regional producer organizations) at a scale which might enable small producers not only to compete more effectively in oligopsonistic commodity markets (e.g. coffee beans, cocoa beans), but also to challenge the dominance of oligopolistic brands in final product markets (e.g. roasted whole bean and ground coffee, chocolate products, sustainable garments) both in the North and in national and regional Southern markets.

Conclusion

This article has explored the support that academics have provided the co-operative movement through the exercise of their core functions of knowledge generation (resulting in the development of a co-operative body of knowledge), transmission (resulting in a field of co-operative studies) and application (resulting in the generation of knowledge management systems in co-operatives). In contrasting the case of co-operatives with similar roles that academics have sought to play in supporting the much younger Fair Trade movement, it has been argued that the establishment of professional associations/scholarly societies would likely accelerate the consolidation of a Fair Trade body of knowledge, the formation of Fair Trade field of study and the generation of knowledge management systems among producer organizations, especially to the degree such organizations help to grow denser fairtrade networks which cut across stakeholder groups, as they have done in the co-op movement.

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Footnotes

1

Among the more prominent pioneering contributors were Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, John Stuart Mill, Charles Gide, and Beatrice and Sidney Webb.

2

Co-operative research centres operate at numerous land grant universities in the US (e.g. the University of Wisconsin (1960), Kansas State University (1984), North Dakota State University (1992), Ohio State University (2017), as well as in universities in a variety of other countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Ethiopia, Germany, Italy, India, Ireland, Norway, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, and the UK. Most of the centers are also linked to co-operative education programs.

3

The earliest of these institutions, the Co-operative College established by the sector in 1919 in Manchester, as a stand-alone institution, dedicated entirely to cooperative research and education through extension programs. Similar co-operative colleges would be promoted in a variety of (former) British colonies, including in the current countries of Botswana, India Lesotho, Malaysia, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania (with the ones in Kenya and Tanzania evolving into comprehensive universities) (Moulton, 2022). Co-operative Universities would also emerge in other countries, including Mondragon University in Spain and the Agricultural Co-operative University in South Korea (Benson & Ross, 2019).

4

National research associations operate in, among other countries, Canada, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, and the UK.

5

Examples include the International Cooperative Alliance’s Committee on Co-operative Research (ICA-CCR) which includes regional subgroups on different continents, and the EMES International Research Network, which is mostly comprised of European co-operative research centres.

6

The UK Society for Co-operative Studies, for example, has published the UK Journal of Co-operative Studies since 1967. Similarly, the Japanese Society publishes the Journal of Co-operative Studies and the Korean Society publishes the Korean Journal of Co-operative Studies .

7

The International Centre for Co-operative Management at St Mary’s University (Halifax, Canada), for example, hosts the International Journal for Co-operative Accounting and Management (IJCAM).

8

As in the case of the early co-operative movement, the origins of the fair trade movement featured many larger than life personalities, some of whom not only functioned as social entrepreneurs and public intellectuals, but also contributed to the development of an academic literature. Among others, these included Franz van der Hoff Boersma (2009, 2005), Michael Barratt Brown (1993) and Robin Murray (Murray, Caulier-Grice & Mulgan, 2010).

9

An example would be the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds (which hosted the FTIS, 2023).

10

The most prominent, Colorado State University’s Center for Fair and Alternative Trade, was founded in 2008 after operating for several years as a research group. More recently, in 2020, the University of Cologne, established the Kompetenzzentrum Fairer Handel (Competence Center Fair Trade), which has a mandate to promote research on Fair Trade in German-speaking countries and to act as a as a contact point for non-academic institutions and organizations.

11

A prime example here is International Centre of Research and Information on the Public, Social and Cooperative Economy (CIRIEC), whose remit includes social enterprises, non-profit firms and public sector corporations, as well as co-operatives. It publishes The Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics . A closely related example has seen the formation of a new hybrid field, the social solidarity economy (Yi, 2023; Utting, 2015). This development came about as co-operative researchers, mostly in Southern Europe and Quebec, operating out of a social economy tradition, began engaging with Latin American researchers examining the ‘popular economy’ or the ‘solidarity economy’. It was facilitated by practitioner and researcher interaction through the International Social Solidarity Network (RIPESS). Similarly, the European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises (EURICSE) at the University of Trento has also embraced a broader range of investigation, as reflected in the title of its Journal of Economic Organization Diversity (JEOD).

12

The Canadian Association for Co-operatives Studies, for example, has representation on the national apex body, Co-operative and Mutuals Canada (CMC), which regularly shares research results with members.

13

In 2012, for example, the two major conferences (Manchester, Quebec City) organized as part of the UN International Year of Co-operatives incorporated a wide variety of research sessions.

14

Many national research associations, such as CASC and the UK Society for Co-operative Studies, also have an educational mandate (with members typically active in both co-op research and education).

15

The Association of Co-operative Educators (ACE), which incorporates both academics and practitioners, has operated across Canada, the US and Puerto Rico (in French, English and Spanish) since 1952.

16

The International Co-operative Business Education Consortium (ICBEC) connects co-operative business educators from more than 150 institutions in more than 40 countries around the world.

17

St Mary’s, for example, offers a master’s degree in Co-operative Management.

18

University College Cork (UCC), for example, offers a master’s degree in Sustainable Development, Agri-Food and Co-operatives.

19

UCC also offers a master’s degree in Co-operatives and Social Enterprise.

20

Cape Breton University (Canada), for example, offers an MBA in Community Economic Development.

21

In India, the Institute for Rural Management Ananda (IRMA), established in 1979 by the founder of the AMUL dairy co-op, offers an MBA in Rural Management, while Shiv Nadar University (India) has recently launched an MSc degree in Rural Management which also focuses primarily on co-operatives and producer-owned enterprises.

22

The Business & Society Program at York University (Canada), has offered an undergraduate Fair Trade course since 2016.

23

The closest thing to a programme might be the array of undergraduate course offerings of the Gabellie School of Business at Fordham University (New York) which include Fair Trade and Micro Finance, Fair Trade and Entrepreneurship, and Fair Trade and Spirituality and Social Justice.

24

The School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex, for example, offers a module on Fair Trade, Ethical Business and New Moral Economies, in its MA program in Food and Development.

25

The Green Campus Co-operative, for example, what was established by faculty members and students to make Fair Trade apparel more available on campuses, regularly provides placements and internships for students (Reed, 2021).

26

In 1862 the Merrill Act established the first land grand universities, which were followed by the formation of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in 1890 and the Tribal Colleges and Universities in 1894 (NASEM, 2022; Rasmussen, 2002).

27

Most Northern government have international development assistant programs (e.g. the US (USAID), the UK (DFAIT), Germany (GIZ), Denmark (DANDIA), Sweden (SIDA), etc.), which collaborate with national university extension programs (and NGOs).

28

In Canada alone, extensions programs contributed to the development of four regional co-operative groups: Co-operative Atlantic on the East coast; Co-operative Féderée (now Solio) in Quebec; Federated Co-operative in western Canada and; Arctic Co-operative, which operates in Northern communities (Dodaro & Pluta, 2012; MacPherson, 1979). Similar co-operative groups and movements also emerged in late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the US (Nembhard, 2014; Curl, 2012), the UK (Wilson, Webster & Vorberg-Rugh, 2013), Germany (Schiffgen, 1979) and other European countries.

29

For a variety of (political/geo-political) reasons, efforts to promote co-operatives in the Southern states in the post-World War II era, did not enjoy the same degree of success in terms of developing major co-operative groups (Pratt, 1999; Craig, 1993; Develtere, 1992). A notable exception was the Indian dairy co-operative, Amul (Patel, 1990).

30

Prominent examples which have been able to leverage external support to engage in significant economic upgrading activities (including the production, distribution and sale of final products in domestic and international markets) would include UCIRI in Mexico, Kuapa Kokoo in Ghana, Norandino in Peru and El Ceibo in Bolivia.

31

For its part, Fairtrade International has developed a new research for learning agenda, which promises to promote much greater collaboration with academics and students.

32

This includes the replication of projects that support organizational and productive capacity of co-operatives as well as their ability to participate in community programs (e.g. healthy eating programs, public health programs, adult education programs, etc.).