Sophisticated Teams Stripping Groves for Black Market : Avocados Bringing Record Prices--for Thieves

California avocado growers, who for the last four years have battled rock-bottom prices and an industry-wide recession, are confronting a new enemy this season--sophisticated thieves who deploy teams of workers to raid entire groves.

The rising number of avocado thefts has prompted at least one grower to hire an airplane to fly over his grove to spy any would-be thieves, and led other farmers to begin patrolling their property.

According to growers and law enforcement officials in San Diego County, heart of California’s avocado industry, the record high retail prices have made avocados a hot item on the black market virtually overnight.

The theft problems arrive as California growers, who produce more than 80% of the nation’s avocado crop, are experiencing their first good season in four years.

Bumper crops, sagging public demand and soaring water rates had conspired to send the price of the fruit plummeting and force many growers into bankruptcy. At one point, the wholesale price per pound dipped to 17 cents--well below the 30 cents per pound it costs to grow the pear-shaped fruit in much of the state. Currently wholesale prices are around 85 cents per pound, but have been as high as $1.80 per pound this season.

But officials with Calavo, an agricultural sales cooperative representing nearly 50% of California’s growers, 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 financed by a tax paid by all 8,500 of the state’s growers, reported that statewide sales for the industry totaled $115 million for the 1984-85 fiscal year, the strongest performance since 1979-80.

Perhaps more distressing, 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 harvest 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 procedure is effective because it looks like 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 seven days a week, 24 hours a day--and at most of these fields, it’s absentee owners--who’s going to come around to blow the whistle?”

Sheriff deputies 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 have recently caught thieves red-handed and recovered their fruit.

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

But the growers are fighting back. Some have instituted grove patrols and alerted neighbors, while others are fencing their property.

The Escondido-based Henry Avocado Co., a grove management and packing firm, has employed perhaps the most innovative tactic to date--an airplane. A week ago the company hired a pilot to make low-flying runs over its 1,500 acres in a single-engine plane to spot--and dissuade--thieves.