2023-11-27 00:24:46
The oil is worth gold, the olives this year pay well and the thieves know it. “They throw two olive trees on your mantle, they take it away and they have screwed you out for 200 euros this year,” says José Luis Sánchez, a farmer. And that is in the best of cases, because they live worried, they fear that one day they will arrive and see that their harvest has been stolen.
Another farmer, Fernando Micó, says that their “hands are tied because what are you doing? You’re not going to be there at night.” The Roca Group of the Civil Guard monitors on the field that everything is in order, but there is a lot of mischief.
The agent Juan Antonio Romero points out that “they take advantage of a legal document and with it they introduce more kilos than the account. Maybe they have permission to harvest a field of 50 olive trees and they are really selling olives as if they had harvested double or triple and there the theft is detected.”
Monitoring thousands of hectares is impossible, which is why the Civil Guard intensifies controls both at the access to the oil mills and at the point of sale itself. The objective is to prevent the stolen product from reaching the market. “If they steal it and they can’t sell it, we practically put an end to the problem,” says Vicente Estevez, from Grupo Roca de Xàtiva.
Although it continues to happen, there are more thefts but fewer complaints. Many farmers give up, they believe that there is little punishment and a lot of impunity. That is why they demand that the penalties be toughened, since, today, the fine compensates the loot, it is cheap for them to steal and even if they are caught.
“They come today, they take 500 kilos, tomorrow another 500, the next day another 500, and when you realize they have emptied your field and you have nothing and they can’t do anything to them,” explains Rafa Tomás, a warehouse manager. Even so, in the sector they insist on the importance of reporting to make visible a problem that costs them more than 25 million euros a year in losses.
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