Avocados are as popular in New Zealand as they are around the world. This means sometimes their value can quickly soar - in some cases to more than $10 each. That, in turn, results in an alluring black market where criminals are robbing hardworking growers to make a quick buck.
Neville Cooper's avocado orchard in Whakamarama has been burgled at least eight times in the past four years. Two of those robberies were just this month. At the start of June, Cooper says "probably about 1000" avocados were stolen. Then last week thieves targeted him again and "probably got away with a couple of hundred".
He was robbed twice in 2017, four times in 2018 and already twice this year - and these are just the instances he knows about. With more than 300 mature avocado trees, it's hard to keep track of all of the fruit.
In the past, thieves have cut through fences, wire netting and even shorted electric fence wires. The property has security cameras, but even they haven't deterred the thieves - some have even committed daylight robbery. Sometimes it looks like robbers are using garden rakes to remove the fruit, as the ground was littered with baby avocados. "These scumbags [are] ruining people's lives."
Cooper's security cameras have captured partial pictures of robbers at night. Items of clothing left behind during their heists have even been DNA tested by police, but so far no one has been caught.
Cooper is just one of the many growers to be targeted by thieves. Last year, Graeme Burgess had around $100,000 worth of avocados pinched from his farm in the Far North. Burgess says avocados were pillaged from about 112 trees at the Kaikohe orchard, hitting the business hard. But no one was caught for the robbery.
"We only get one pay day a year," he says. "People get their pay every week or every month, we don't. We only get one pay day [crop] a year, and then the buggers come along and try and take that off us."
Source: stuff.co.nz