Tablelands lychee farmers furious over alleged fruit rustlers
Fruit rustlers have allegedly been busted poaching prized lychees after a string of raids on fruit popular on the Christmas platter.
Cairns
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FRUIT rustlers have allegedly been busted poaching prized lychees after a string of raids on fruit popular on the Christmas platter.
Tablelands farmers and rural crime detectives say mostly “opportunistic’’ thieves have targeted tropical fruit like melons, pineapples, mangoes, lychees and limes.
But criminal syndicates have also reportedly used trucks and teams of pickers to raid farms, at harvest time, and when prices are high.
Lychees are today at record-high prices, selling for $19.90 a kg, at city supermarkets.
“That’s why people are pinching them,’’ Mareeba grower Mal Everett said.
“Popular varieties are selling at the fruit markets for $100 a box, where normally they’d go for $28 or $30.”
The sweet, juicy, festive red fruit is at top dollar because of short supply due to frost, bad weather and a late season.
Mr Everett said every year his Burdekin mango farm was raided by fruit poachers in commercial-scale thefts.
“They’d turn up with trucks and clean out half an orchard of mangoes overnight,’’ he said.
“Unless you catch them in the act, it’s hard to prove.’’
Police have charged a young Kuranda pair with alleged crop theft after a farmer spotted them on a lychee farm at Mareeba.
It is alleged the man, 24, and woman, 25, accessed the property not visible from the road and picked several plastic bags full of fruit.
“Theft is theft,’’ said Detective Sergeant Mark Kerswell, of the Major and Organised Crime Squad (rural).
“Farmers often don’t know what to do about it, but it doesn’t matter if it is a house block, fruit orchard or million dollar cattle station.
“We take trespass and theft from farms very seriously.
“Every year we receive complaints about people out stealing lychees, mangoes; and limes is a big one.”
Mareeba Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association president Joe Moro said there had been rising levels of crime on rural blocks.
“That’s the reason there’s not many honesty boxes left,’’ he said.
Originally published as Tablelands lychee farmers furious over alleged fruit rustlers
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