Rash of Thefts Target Greek Producers

It is this time of the year that if you find your­self roam­ing the areas of rural Greece, you will most likely come across work­ers har­vest­ing olives in the olive groves, trac­tors and pickup trucks loaded with sacks of olives con­tin­u­ously mov­ing back and forth between the groves and the oil mills, and olive oil pro­duc­ers flock­ing to the mills dis­cussing yield and prices.

The har­vest­ing sea­son is at its peak, but not with­out its usual chal­lenges. Now, reports are com­ing in from var­i­ous areas of the coun­try where cases of theft of olives and freshly made olive oil have occurred.

A few days ago near Messolongi, thieves took eight tons of table olives that were kept by local pro­duc­ers in a ware­house facil­ity. According to the police, they prob­a­bly loaded the olives on trucks and drove off. No fol­low-up on the case has made the news yet, despite the vol­ume of the stolen crop.

Last month in the Chalkidiki region in north­ern Greece, police arrested six peo­ple accused of tres­pass­ing and har­vest­ing olives from groves that belonged to oth­ers. They had allegedly com­mit­ted the same offense again just days ago in the same area, and had already trans­ferred the loot of more than two tons of olives to a mill for pro­cess­ing.

An elder pro­ducer liv­ing near Heraklion in Crete dis­cov­ered that his yield of half-ton of olive oil was miss­ing from his house. He lost not only the oil meant for his own house­hold use but also the income he would have made by sell­ing the sur­plus to his neigh­bors, he told the author­i­ties.

In another cir­cum­stance, per­pe­tra­tors invaded a barn at a vil­lage near Agrinio in the Aetolia-Acarnania region and removed con­tain­ers with 2 tons of table olives val­ued at more than €4,000 ($4,739).

In Central Greece, the regional admin­is­tra­tion, in an attempt to pre­vent sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions, issued a warn­ing to mill own­ers and olive oil mer­chants to be cau­tious when deal­ing with unfa­mil­iar peo­ple and inform the police of any­thing sus­pi­cious dur­ing their trans­ac­tions.

And in sev­eral cases thieves also took equip­ment and machin­ery like tarps, lad­ders, chain­saws, and elec­tric har­vesters that work­ers left unat­tended at the field for the next day’s har­vest.

Such inci­dents come up every year dur­ing the har­vest­ing sea­son and even more so dur­ing chal­leng­ing eco­nomic times and peri­ods of higher unem­ploy­ment.

• Agronews


• Proto Thema