It is a wonder, said a high court judge, that local farmers do not just give up when faced with the acts of crop thieves.
“It cannot be easy, if I may quote a reggae artist, to have a society where you have people who want to raid the barn but don’t want to plant the corn,” said Justice Christopher Birch yesterday.
“It baffles me that people watch others, not with a view to assisting them when they are planting but they are there and watching them with evil intent for that moment just before you reap, literally, the fruits of your labour,” he added.
“That said, the courts must pay tribute to those farmers that they do not just throw up their hands and walk away and, in so doing, starve us of their produce. It would be so easy for the farmers to collectively decide ‘we done with this. You all go in the supermarket and pay their prices. We done with this, we will find something else to do’,” he said.
The judge’s comments came as he imposed an 18-month suspended sentence on self-confessed crop thief and farmer Ricardo Anderson Hoyte who was before him in the No 5A Supreme Court yesterday. (HLE)
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