Theft Reported While Industry Trained

Taylor Hillman Specialty Crops, Tree, nut & vine crops

How much of an issue are crop thefts like fictitious pickups? So much that agriculture detectives were called out of last week’s nut theft training seminar to start a new investigation.

Nut Load
Western Agricultural Processors Association (WAPA) with help from American Pistachio Growers held a tree nut theft training seminar last week. Organizers say the training workshop came to fruition after learning some more information about the trending crime since their emergency summit in December. Since that summit, there has been several attempts to steal loads of nuts throughout the state; some were successful and others were not.

WAPA CEO Roger Isom talks about nut theft and steps to help protect growers
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WAPA President and CEO Roger Isom led the training and stressed how big of an issue this is becoming in California. That point was magnified when the Tulare County Sheriff’s ag theft detectives had to leave halfway through the training because they were just notified of a new theft in their county. Isom says this issue wasn’t even on WAPA’s radar last year, but all of the information collected from experts on the issue shows this is something that is not going away anytime soon and is trending in agriculture.