Charles Sr rallies rural army to challenge farm thieves

WESTERN BUREAU:

Retired veteran parliamentarian Pearnel Charles Sr has rallied farmers to form a brigade to stave off the attacks and plunder of produce and livestock.

Charles, the father of Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Pearnel Charies Jr, sought to fire up agricultural interests in the heartland of Jamaica’s Breadbasket Parish to band together to rein in losses.

An estimated $6 billion is lost to praedial theft annually, with 82 per cent of farmers and fisherfolk being affected on average.

“I do not understand the farmers. How unnu get soft? We have 500 farmers in the division and two boys can make up with their friends and come thief a man’s goats tonight, and unnu in your bed asleep. A rubbish that!” said the elder Charles during his address at the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) divisional meeting at Nain Basic School in St Elizabeth.

“I am saying to the farmers to form a farmers’ brigade so that some of you sleep and some stand up and watch. No boy can come with a truck to come take up your goats, take up your melons, and take up your pumpkins and carry go a town, and you at your bed asleep,” he added.

Charles, a former deputy leader of the JLP, noted that in some cases, praedial thieves co-opt other farmers in the predation of their neighbours’ crops and livestock to enrich themselves.

That assertion corroborates the theory of outgoing St Elizabeth police commander Superintendent Dwight Daley, who said in May that farmers were collaborating with thieves in ‘animal laundering’.

In May, the Ministry of Agriculture reported that 102 persons were arrested for praedial larceny during the 2021-2022 period and more than 70 stolen animals recovered during that time. But those numbers are a drop in the bucket based on anecdotal accounts as well as under-reporting in the industry.

Plans are currently being put in place to increase the current fines for praedial larceny to upwards of $5 million and to create a National Praedial Larceny Database to highlight and map hotspots for the illicit activity.

However, Charles stressed that his proposal for farmers’ brigades should not be mistaken as an invitation to take the law into their own hands.

Farm thieves are often confronted by proprietors and residents, with deadly consequences meted out to some culprits.

“Mi nah say you must carry a cutlass, and mi nah say you must carry a gun, but once thieves know the farmers are out there, they will come to Spur Tree and then they must turn back.

“But they are going to continue to make the farming community suffer more than any storm, hurricane, or flood, if you do not stop them,” Charles warned.

The meeting was held in support of Delroy Hutchinson, the JLP’s councillor-caretaker for St Elizabeth’s Myersville division.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com

According to Section 11 of the Praedial Larceny (Prevention) Act, any person suspected of possessing stolen produce or livestock can be fined up to $40,000 or spend three years in prison if he or she refuses to allow a search of his premises by the authorities.

Section 14 states that any person who falsely claims ownership over any perishable goods can be fined up to $40,000 or three times the value of the goods, whichever amount is greater, or a prison term of up to three years.