The harvest of the first varieties of oranges will soon begin in the Valencian fields, and we are already in the avocado and carob harvest season. These are fruit and vegetable products that are usually the target of thieves who, by different means, end up placing them in the legal sales circuit, in stores and supermarkets. A black market in origin but later legalized and which, according to the ROCA team (Robberies in the Countryside) of the Civil Guard, has not increased in recent years.
The number of thefts remains stable, but it continues to cause a lot of discomfort to the Valencian farmers who suffer from it, since they do not usually have their fields insured against theft. This Sunday, the Valencian Association of Farmers, AVA-ASAJA, asked to “toughen the penalties” for criminals and warned that in the last year the thefts caused losses of 25 million euros.
From the ROCA team, which has active permanent surveillance, it is reported that the selection of fruits or vegetables targeted by these thefts is conditioned by their price in the final market, even more so in times of high inflation and rising costs of farm products. . Just a year ago, a kilo of carob was paid for almost two euros on the black market and these were dates in which 120 tons were stolen in 2022 in Spain. But now it is barely worth forty cents a kilo and interest in the black market for this fruit has plummeted.
For this reason, the Valencia Civil Guard Command comments that, as an example, in the Llíria area only five reports of carob thefts have been received compared to seventy last year. Not many months ago, many reports were made about the thefts of carob, known as “the poor man's chocolate” during the Civil War and now highly appreciated in the cosmetics and diet industry.
The same does not happen with avocado, whose price has skyrocketed and is a product coveted by thieves, as well as kiwi. What happens is that avocado or kiwi plantations are still of little significance compared to others such as oranges, a fruit that, if the season is good in terms of prices, is the most sought after target by thieves. Regarding persimmon, a fruit that has flooded Valencian fields in recent years to replace oranges, it is not stolen since it requires chemical treatments before sale that thieves cannot provide.
How do thieves place these products into legal sales lines? It's pretty simple. There are two ways. The first is direct sales in stores. “If they say they are farmers they can sell directly and it becomes very difficult to detect it; It may happen that a legal farmer also carries stolen product,” say sources from the Civil Guard.
The other route is the warehouses that act as wholesale product collection, where the sale of stolen product with false documentation has been discovered and, also, sometimes complicity between the owners and the crews that unload trucks of stolen product. “When we monitor, we can know which trucks arrive and from there carry out controls to locate the stolen product,” these sources add.
The Civil Guard explains that the profile of a thief is usually people from the area where the robbery takes place or groups of a few men who take advantage of the night to enter the fields and empty them. “They are not violent people, if they are discovered by the farmers they usually leave what they have stolen and leave,” and these sources add that “they know that a robbery with violence has a high price before the courts, so they try to ensure that if they are caught it is with the minimum penalty.”
There are, of course, repeat offenders, and it happens that, as Justice tends to be very slow, some carry out several robberies while the case for which they are being prosecuted is being investigated. One fact: thefts in the countryside are not only of horticultural products, tools and even industrial machinery for the countryside are also often stolen.
The Civil Guard highlights that the stolen product that is seized ends up being destroyed. “They are health regulations, since we do not know the traceability of the product and whether it can be harmful to health,” they point out.
