Farm Thieves Target Grapes, and Even Bees

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BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Sgt. Walt Reed said he could tell right away that the grapes were stolen. They looked like an ordinary bunch. Except, he said, for the way they were dressed.
“Usually grapes are put into plastic bags,” said Sergeant Reed, a 28-year veteran of the Kern County Sheriff’s Office. “But these grapes were just thrown in a Styrofoam box.”
Sergeant Reed — who eventually arrested a suspect after staking out a Kern County vineyard — is just one of dozens of deputies on the front lines of agricultural crime in California, home to the nation’s most productive farms and the people who prey on them. While thievery has long been a fact of life in the country, such crimes are on the rise and fighting them has become harder in many parts of California as many grants for rural law enforcement have withered on the vine.
While other states have their own agricultural intrigue — cattle rustlers in Texas, tomato takers in Florida — few areas can claim a wider variety of farm felons than California, where ambushes on everything from almonds to beehives have been reported in recent years. Then there is the hardware: diesel fuel, tools and truck batteries regularly disappear in the Central Valley, the state’s agricultural powerhouse, where high unemployment, foreclosures and methamphetamine abuse have made criminals more desperate, officials say.
“All of our ag crimes are up,” said Sergeant Reed, who oversees a unit of two full-time detectives — down from three a year ago — all patrolling a county about eight times the size of Rhode Island. A wet winter and warm summer, after all, have meant healthy crops, he said, and a healthy market means happy thieves.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/us/22crime.html?_r=1
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Steve Mello, whose corn and alfalfa farm has been hit by thieves over the past year, says, “It’s difficult to lock up 1,400-plus acres.”