FARMERS’ PLEA

CALLS FOR ACTION ON PRAEDIAL LARCENY AS CROP THIEVES HIT AGAIN

By Sheria Brathwaite

Farmers are again pleading with authorities to do more to crack down on praedial larceny after thieves uprooted more than $2 000 worth of cassava from a St Philip farm.
Their calls also come amid the ongoing sale of sugarcane along the island’s highways.
Owner of the 18-acre plot in Ebenezer that thieves hit, Anthony Charles, told Barbados TODAY that last Wednesday he discovered his crops had been stolen.
“Tuesday, we left the location after 7 p.m. and the following morning we noticed that the contents of one of our feed bags had been thrown on the ground so that initially sparked some questions. Upon further inspection, we walked through the ground and noticed that the majority of our cassava had been pulled. We took the necessary steps in reporting the matter to the police and contacting the Ministry of Agriculture,” said the small farmer who disclosed that about 221 holes of the crop were pulled.
“It is very heartbreaking to know that you put in all this work, waited six months and then to lose your crop overnight.”
Going forward, Charles said he will have to pull his pockets to install solar lights, WiFi solar cameras or hire private mobile security.
He insisted that more must be done to address crop theft.
“They [the authorities] speak about it a lot but as it relates to enforcement, a lot is left to be done about the issue,” Charles lamented.
He said consumers should also question vendors about the origin of their goods and vendors should have receipts as proof of purchase.
Meanwhile, chairman of the Barbados Sugar Industry Limited Mark Sealy said he was concerned that cane was being sold along the highway before the 2023 harvest started last month and he believed it was not purchased from plantations.
“As you can see, there is definitely predial larceny of cane going on because there are people selling cane at roundabouts and that is not their cane. We are waiting for the crop theft bill to come into play and that would protect the farmers. There are to be significant fines, which I think is a very positive thing if you are talking about food security,” he said.
Confirming that he was aware of at least one private planter’s fields being hit, he said: “It is very hard to police sugar cane fields and you are going to get hit”.
“What I would suggest to the public is that they shouldn’t buy sugar cane at roundabouts simply because – and I am not saying that all the cane is stolen – the majority of it is stolen goods and you should not be purchasing stolen goods,” he added.
As it relates to the police doing investigations into the origin of the pieces of cane being sold, Sealy said: “It is clear and plain to see. I don’t think anybody has to go and visit the police station and report it. The police should really do something about it. Maybe they are waiting on the crop theft bill too but we need to get praedial larceny under control.
“COVID-19 has taught us that we need food security and crop theft is a negative on food security. It has gotten very, very bad [over the years] and farmers have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in security every year to protect their crops and that means that the price of crops has got to go up to the consumers.”
The Protection of Agricultural Products Act was passed in the House of Assembly and the Senate last September. In January, Minister of Agriculture Indar Weir said it would be proclaimed in February.
The new piece of legislation states that any person found guilty of an offence under the Act is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $100 000, imprisonment for five years, or both. It also states that any person in possession of commercial quantities of agricultural products who fails to produce to a police officer, within 24 hours of the request, a delivery note or proof of ownership, can be charged up to $100 000, imprisonment for five years, or both, on summary conviction.
Efforts to reach Minister Weir for an update on the proclamation of the Act were unsuccessful.
sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb