Culprits include 'retirees, unemployed people, young people' according to local police chief

© Associated Press/ASAJAIn this photo dated Feb. 16, 2011 released by the Spanish farmer's union ASAJA, a cow which has been carved and stripped of most of its meat lies in a field in Fernan Caballero, Spain.
Some hard-up Spaniards are stealing the earth's bounty from farmers to help get by, including one case in which a prized calf was killed and filleted overnight by thieves.
Police have added the patrolling of farmland - sometimes on horseback - to their list of daily tasks. Farmers in some areas are teaming up to carry out nighttime patrols on their own.
In villages near farming areas, several thousand paramilitary Civil Guards, regional and local police are even setting up checkpoints to sniff out not drugs or drunken drivers but stolen fruit or farming equipment, like copper wire used in irrigation systems. The Civil Guard says sometimes its officers mount "cage operations" - sealing off whole villages to check cars and trucks for, say, pilfered pears.
The stolen goods are mainly for resale: The food ends up in small roving street markets and the metal goes to scrap dealers. Last year alone more than 20,000 thefts were reported at Spanish farms. The Interior Ministry says it has no comparative figures from other years, or for so far in 2012. But authorities and farm groups blame the thefts on Spain's economic crisis and say they are a big enough problem for the patrols, which began last season, to stay in force this year.
Comment: A sad indication of the success of the main-stream media in spreading fear and racial division.