Laptops, you can understand. Flat-screen TVs, cell phones, and designer jeans, same thing. But now, withthe rising cost of food, sophisticated bands of thieves have begun targeting fresh American produce and other foods, including tomatoes – which could potentially drive costs even higher.
A band of thieves made off with six tractor-trailer loads of tomatoes and a truck full of cucumbers from Florida growers late last month, the New York Times reported this morning. Total value of the haul: about $300,000.
“The thieves disappeared with the shipments just after the price of Florida tomatoes skyrocketed after freezes that badly damaged crops in Mexico,” according to the newspaper report. “That suddenly made Florida tomatoes a tempting target.”
What’s intriguing about the Case of the Stolen Tomatoes is that the thieves apparently created a faux trucking company, based in Miami, to transport the goods across state lines. They invested in refrigerated trailers and the like to haul the perishable goods from one place to another. Clearly they had specific end points in mind.
They were watching prices rise, assembling their plans and equipment, and lying in wait for the chance to rip off expensive foods when the numbers were in their favor. In today’s tough economy, there is apparently no lack of ingenuity for ulterior purposes.
This isn’t just a veggie tale, by the way, though one wishes it were, in some quaint way. One load of frozen meat, worth about $48,000, was picked up from a meatpacker north of Miami and bound for Salem, Oregon. It, too, has gone missing. Given the high cost of gasoline right now, this is no inexpensive enterprise. Reports of gas siphoning have been surfacing in recent days. Are these thieves doing that, too?
U.S. consumer food prices are expected to rise between 2 and 3 percent in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The cost of living in this country rose in March for the ninth consecutive month, increasing by 0.5 percent for a second month, according to data from the Labor Department this morning. A one-pound loaf of whole wheat bread cost 7 percent more in December 2010 than a year earlier, while a pound of ground beef was up 8.8 percent. Given these facts, plus 8.8 percent unemployment and falling wages, it’s entirely possible that this produce theft is the beginning of a trend, not just a one-off.
Should home gardeners planning their vegetable beds right now in certain parts of the country be on the watch for fake trucking companies and desperate produce thieves? Who knows? For now, police working on the case in Florida are apparently flummoxed by the recent food crimes. “The thieves appear to have benefited by stealing loads in several jurisdictions, with the result that some police departments were slow to share information about the crimes,” reports the Times.
Visit the Business Buzz home page.
