Poor Boy Producer farmers continue their cleanup for a third day after vandals slashed their grain bag in a field near Rouleau, Sask.
“It was just a mess that we weren’t counting on cleaning up,” farmhand Michael McCullough said.
He and the field manager Trevor Bjarnason have been busy the past few days extracting from the burst open grain bag, salvaging what they could and discarding the rest.
“It hurts you know, you put your grain out here,” McCullough said.
“Why? Why, what did you accomplish by doing this? Does it make you feel good to drive out and wreck somebody else’s property?”
The 60-meter grain bag was carrying approximately 12,000 bushels of durum with an estimated market value close to $100,000.
According to McCullough, they were able to salvage most of the durum. He estimated they lost up to 500 bushels of durum and three days of work.
Adding in costs of manpower, fuel and wear and tear on their equipment, he said the crime cost them around $5,000.
It’s a senseless crime but not unheard of across the province. McCullough said there’s been a rash of bags being cut. He said he doesn’t understand why people do this.
According to Todd Lewis, president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, the perception of petty crime is increasing.
Lewis is urging any farmers to report anything, regardless of how small the crime may be.
“You know the RCMP are only as good as what’s reported to them, and if we want better service, we have to let police know what’s going on,” he said.
According to RCMP in Saskatchewan, the Maidstone RCMP detachment reported one incident of vandalism in the last six months. However, it doesn’t include other reported crimes in other detachments.
In a statement, RCMP said they encourage farmers to report any vandalism and “reporting each and every incident is key,” as those “complaints help them gather knowledge about detachment areas.”
McCullough said they’re now taking extra precautions and keeping an extra close eye on their product.
“When we put bags out there, there might be some surveillance that they don’t know about,” he said.