'Avocados are the green gold.' Thieves are striking groves around the world, hauling off the green fruit by the ton. Farmers have turned to infrared cameras, barbed wire and security teams.
TZANEEN, South Africa—Avocado farmer Mark Alcock has motion-activated infrared cameras dotting 170 acres of groves that send intruder alerts to his phone. The beeps typically wake him at least once an hour, every night.It’s usually bush pigs, porcupines or baboons. “But there’s always that chance it’ll be someone coming to steal,” he said. “It’s just getting out of hand.
Avocado theft in South Africa used to be small potatoes. They would be stolen to eat or sold by the roadside. Robbers now work closely with organized crime networks that can launder the fruit into legitimate markets, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, an NGO. South Africa’s avocado farmers suffer annual losses of about 24 million South African rand, around $1.
At upscale restaurants from Johannesburg to Cape Town, avocados have found their way atop pizzas and into ice cream. Every week, he buys more than 350 pounds of ripe avocados to sate customers who line up at his stands for avocado toast topped with everything from walnuts to strawberries to biltong, a local dried meat, similar to jerky.During the pandemic last year, South Africa had its worst economic contraction since at least 1946. The country’s official unemployment rate hit a record 33% in the first quarter this year, helping fuel crime.
The thieves had already picked nearly 450 pounds of avocados. The security team spent four hours tracking the crooks up a nearby mountain before giving up the chase. The fruit was recovered, but because the avocados were snapped from trees too early in the season, they were worthless. Every night, he oversees at least 100 guards and supervisors on duty, some racing around Tzaneen’s dark, deserted roads with howling hounds in tow.
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