4 months ago
22
Farm thieves are turning to drones and the hijacking of trucks despite an overall fall in violent crimes.
Agribusiness leaders say they are experiencing high levels of theft, and that rising security costs due to minimum wage hikes adds to the challenge. The business leaders say thieves are stealing by the truckload and using camera-drones to scope out farms.
“I know it’s been very topical in the news that crime is down, largely murders, but I would argue that theft is huge,” said Alicia Bogues, head of Regional Development at the CB Group Limited.
Bogues and other business leaders addressed a panel discussion last week during the release of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce’s quarterly business and consumer confidence indices. Consumer confidence hit an all-time high due to tourism prospects, but business confidence was flat with crime listed as a main negative factor.
Farm theft remains so widespread that locals commonly refer to it as its official term, praedial larceny. In general, larceny involves the act of stealing without force, but increasingly thieves are using violence to secure crops, turning these acts into robberies.
Serious crimes including murder, rape, robberies, and break-ins totalled some 1,220 from January to April 15, down 18.5 per cent compared to the previous year, according to Jamaica Constabulary Force statistics. Data on praedial larceny while not disclosed would overlap robberies and break-ins, down 8.0 per cent and up 24 per cent respectively.
“From praedial larceny, right into your business,” said Bogues. “It’s like an entire crime syndicate operating.”
Despite increased camera monitoring, theft continues on the farm lands but also off-site.
“The collusion, theft of fuel, theft of product, trucks getting hijacked en route to make deliveries, that definitely continues,” she said adding that it peaks during the Christmas season.
Bogues was responding to a question during the panel discussion on ‘Building supply chain resilience through crop yield optimisation and climate smart agriculture’.
Peter McConnell, Managing Director of Trade Winds Ltd agreed with Bogues, and described farm theft as one of the biggest disincentives to agriculture. Thieves are using technology to outsmart farm managers, “it’s not getting any better”, he said.
“We have deployed drone surveillance, tried to keep it covert. It only lasted about a month or less until everybody knew we’re using drones,” McConnell said.
Then last month, just after nightfall, a supervisor called to check whether the security drone was in a specific area. It was parked and shut off.
“It turned out that the thieves were using drones to monitor our security. That’s the level we have gone to. It’s a very serious problem,” McConnell said.
Hurricane related crop-loss hurts but motivates the farmer to replant quickly. “But when you lose your crop to a thief, it is so demotivating,” McConnell said.
He added that Trade Winds turned down business opportunities in unfamiliar areas to avoid possible extortion and theft.
Meanwhile, David Crum Ewing, Operations Executive at GK, said that despite farm watch programmes, some still lose entire crops to thieves.
“There has been a shortage of scotch bonnet [peppers] over the last year, and several farmers have lost fields which have just been raided overnight, where they’ve lost 20-to-30,000 pounds within 24 hours,” he said.
In January, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining Floyd Green outlined a multi-pronged approach to combat praedial larceny across the country.
This included: proof of purchase in market spaces, strengthening of the praedial larceny unit, recruiting and training agricultural wardens, and increasing the fines for convicted persons.
Minister Green said the meat sold by butchers in abattoirs would be scrutinised for their origin.
Meanwhile the maximum punishment for farm theft was moved from $250,000 and six months in prison to $3 million and three years in prison.
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