Growers Confronting a Fresh Menace--Avocado Thieves

California avocado growers, who for four years have battled bumper crops and rock-bottom prices to make ends meet, are confronting a new enemy this season--sophisticated rustlers who deploy teams of workers to raid entire groves.

The rising number of avocado thefts has prompted at least one Escondido grower to hire a pilot to fly over his grove to spot and deter any would-be thieves, and other farmers have begun patroling their property.

Growers and law enforcement officials in San Diego County say the record high prices some varieties of the “green gold” fruit are fetching at the supermarket have made hot avocados a hot item on the black market. The prices may go even higher if frosts predicted for Monday and tonight destroy a significant portion of the county’s avocado crop.

Industry analysts say this season’s thieves are not small-time operators gathering 100 avocados in a gunnysack and selling them along the roadside, but savvy entrepreneurs who drive trucks among the trees and loot entire groves.

“Avocado thefts are certainly on the rise as a result of the price increases we’re seeing in 1985,” said Mark Affleck, director of industry affairs for the California Avocado Commission. “But the real story is these thieves are sophisticated. They are bringing trucks into the groves in broad daylight and actually harvesting the fruit in a routine fashion.”

Sheriff’s deputies who patrol the hilly North County backcountry that is the state’s avocado heartland say this modus operandi is effective because it resembles a legitimate harvesting operation.

“Anybody driving by is going to figure those workers have a right to be out there picking fruit,” said Lt. Joe Bingham, who commands the Sheriff’s Department’s Rural Law Enforcement Division in Julian. “Unless the field is watched 7 days a week, 24 hours a day--and at most of these fields, it’s absentee owners--who’s gonna come around to blow the whistle?”

Law enforcement authorities said they began receiving reports of avocado thefts last week. One Escondido grower, Richard O’Harren, lost his entire crop--an estimated 500 pounds--to thieves sometime during the last month.

Bingham is investigating a larger theft in Valley Center, a rural area about 45 miles northeast of San Diego, and several growers in Fallbrook and Escondido said they recently caught thieves red-handed and have recovered their fruit.

Steve White, president of Cal Flavor Inc., a firm that packs, ships and grows avocados on 900 acres around North County, said his workers reported losses in one of its groves Sunday.

Many incidents go undetected and unreported, however. “Unless you walk your grove every day, it’s very hard to tell when avocados are missing,” Bingham said.

Affleck said the only reports of theft have come from the San Diego County area because the avocado harvest begins in this region. He added that he expects that the problem will become worse as the harvest gears up in January and February.

It is the first time in four years that California growers, who produce more than 80% of the nation’s avocado crop, are having a good season. Bumper crops, sagging demand and soaring water rates had sent the price of the fruit plummeting and forced many growers out of the business. At one point, the price per pound paid to growers dipped to 17 cents--well below the 30 cents per pound it costs them to grow the pear-shaped fruit.

But this year, officials with Calavo, an agricultural sales cooperative representing nearly 50% of the growers in California, say they will record $56.8 million in sales for the 1985 fiscal year, up $12 million over last season. And the California Avocado Commission, a promotional body funded by a tax that all 8,500 of the state’s growers pay, reported that sales statewide for the 1984-85 fiscal year totaled $115 million, the strongest performance since 1979-80.

As recently as three weeks ago, the fruit was fetching more than $1.80 a pound, but the price has recently fallen to about 85 cents a pound, a representative of one packaging firm said. Yet growers are understandably anxious to protect the crop, and some have instituted patrols and alerted neighbors, while others are fencing their property.

Henry Avocado Co., a grove management and packing firm based in Escondido, has employed perhaps the most innovative tactic to date--an air patrol. A week ago the company hired a pilot to fly over its 1,500 acres in a single-engine Cessna to spot--and dissuade--thieves.

“It costs us about $100 an hour, all told, but in an hour you can see a lot of acres, and we had to do something,” said Warren Henry, co-owner of the company. “He flies real low--just over the legal limit--and gets a real good bird’s-eye view.”

Growers also are receiving help from the San Diego County Farm Bureau. Charles Woods, the executive officer of the bureau, said it offers a $750 reward for information leading to the conviction of avocado thieves.

“I’m afraid what we’re seeing is only the beginning of a very bad year for thefts,” Woods said. “With demand so great and supply so short, prices are high, so it doesn’t take a man long to make a good wage off stolen avocados.”

Woods and other industry analysts said avocado thieves unload the hot fruit in a variety of ways. Small-time thieves probably sell them on a street corners or at a swap meet, while bigger-scale crooks will actually do business through a packing house.

“A lot of the packing houses just don’t check to make sure the fruit is legitimate,” Woods said. “What we need is a way to require proof that a seller’s fruit is his own.”