Rising prices for fuel and grain are getting attention these days, including from thieves.
Gasoline and diesel, both valuable, untraceable commodities that are always in high demand and easily resold, have long been targets of theft, even when fuel was cheap, said Staff Sgt. Mike Zens of Brandon’s Blue Hills RCMP detachment.
Zens said theft of fuel from farmyards, vehicle tanks and implements has been on a rising trend in recent months.
The ingredients for such a crime are few: a tractor sitting in an open field, a siphon hose and a few minutes can result in a heist worth several hundred dollars with little, if any, risk of being caught.
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However, the high cost of fuel has changed purchasing behaviour on many farms, with fewer producers opting to fill up their larger bulk tanks as they try to watch their cash flow, he said.
“They just fill up the slip tanks in the back of their vehicles and purchase what they require for that day or week as opposed to filling up the 500 to 600 gallon tank as they used to years ago,” said Zens.
This trend has reduced the number of major fuel thefts, but as farmers rush to finish spring seeding, their reluctance to take the time to report less serious incidents may affect police ability to put criminal gangs out of business.
“We do want those calls because if we don’t get calls, it certainly is not giving us an indication of where the problems may be so that we can increase patrols in a specific area,” said Zens.
The spike in fertilizer prices may also be motivating criminal behaviour. Sometime between late March and early April, 30,000 litres of liquid potash 0-0-25-17 worth $22,000 was drained from a storage tank on a Hutterite colony in the Rural Municipality of Glenwood, according to Sgt. Bob Chabot of Souris RCMP.
“Obviously, it was stolen by somebody with access to a tanker truck. You wouldn’t take it away with four-litre pails,” said Chabot.
He said fuel thefts have dropped in the Souris area since last year, after a band of thieves were arrested and charged.
“Once they were caught, our fuel thefts went down to zero,” said Chabot, who added that reports by alert citizens in the area helped police connect the dots and make an arrest.
Ian Wishart, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers, said higher prices for fuel and fertilizer have led many farmers to take precautions against theft.
“Guys are behaving differently. Tractors aren’t being left in the field overnight. There’s 300 to 400 gallons of fuel in those things,” said Wishart, who added that locking caps aren’t standard on most tractors.
One trucker he knows, who has hauled fertilizer to area retailers for years from a production facility in Brandon, has had to double his bond protection this year, said Wishart.
“They wouldn’t load him otherwise. That shows how valuable the loads are,” he said. “We have the joke now about riding shotgun on fertilizer trucks.”
Ron Kroeker, owner of Country Graphics in Rosenort, Man., the maker of Cropgard, which are coded quarter-inch flakes of newsprint that can be added to grain, said sales this spring are up 100 percent over last year.
Although sales typically peak in July as farmers prepare ahead of the harvest, this year he’s already shipped 100 five-pound bags of the confetti, each of which is enough to protect 50,000 bushels of grain.
