From 50,000 Feet

Oil is not the only commodity getting an historic high price this year. According to the Journal Record, wheat prices have broken $10 per bushel, up from $3 a year ago due to high worldwide demand and bad weather in some wheat-growing places like Argentina and Australia.

So here come the wheat rustlers, writes Brian Bus. Kansas has been ravaged by them, but Oklahoma farmers are being advised to be vigilant:

Current market prices have proven too great a temptation. Thieves recently nabbed about 9,000 bushels of grain worth more than $50,000 from a co-op in western Kansas, law enforcement agencies reported. In a dozen crimes, thieves loaded tractor trailers with grain from elevators and drove off to sell the unprocessed material in other markets, said Dusti Fritz, chief executive of the Kansas Wheat industry organization.

Kansas agriculture producers have faced the same problems this season as Oklahoma farmers, she said. Like Oklahoma, Kansas is known for its hard red winter wheat variety.

“With the crops that we’re marketing right now, we’ve experienced everything from drought to flood to freeze. You name it, we’ve experienced it,” Fritz said.

But Oklahoma Wheat Growers Executive Director Tim Bartram said Oklahoma producers have a slightly different environment that might help protect against the same sort of crime.

“There’s not nearly as much farmer-owned storage as there is in Kansas,” Bartram said. “It makes it a little more difficult to get grain out of the elevator.”

He said the criminals also would have to drive a long distance to buyers who wouldn’t recognize them. Most local elevator operators have been in the business for many years, so they’re familiar with their dealers. And rising fuel prices would cut into the profitability of such a venture, he said.

Regardless, Bartram said his group’s members will be warned about the growing risk. Fritz said her industry representatives are advising grain elevator operators on how to prevent more thefts. Elevators are often left unattended at this time of the year.

“If these prices stay up as we get into harvest, there will be more opportunities,” Bartram said. “It’s not uncommon for a producer to put part of a load on a truck late at night and think about leaving it sit out on the field to take care of in the morning. A lot of these old trucks, if they don’t already have their keys left in them, are pretty easy to start up anyway. … That’s probably not smart for producers to do.”

An average truckload of 300 bushels at a conservative harvest price of $7 per bushel would be worth more than $2,000, he said.

Now, wheat burglary is not a new problem. Digging around for a little perspective on this story, I found an item from Time magazine — dated December 29, 1952. Under the heading “New Ideas,” I found this:

Theft-Proof Wheat. The Roosevelt Stockman’s Association put on sale confetti to foil wheat thieves. (For the last few years there have been several big wheat thefts a year in Roosevelt County, Mont.) Packaged with a code number printed on each piece of paper, the confetti is mixed with the farmer’s wheat, and the code number recorded by elevator men when the wheat is traded. If the wheat is stolen, the code number makes it easy to identify when resold.

Clever. So why isn’t this confetti method used now? Didn’t see another mention of it. My guess is, people didn’t like little bits of paper in their Wonder Bread. Does anyone know the real story?

Tags: commodity prices, confetti, grain elevators, Kansas, Oklahoma, wheat