A $4 billion industry on the Central Coast is under attack. Agriculture is the lifeblood of the local economy. But thieves are bleeding the industry dry.
Now some growers are taking extreme measures to protect their livelihood.
"You can't be out there all the time. We're working long hours and long days. At the time we're home taking a rest, these guys are out there," said Los Banos farmer Cannon Michael.
Thieves came twice to Michael's farm and they were prepared with maps of his property.
They got to water pumps where valuable copper wire was buried deep underground.
"A 14 dollar piece of wire retail value cost me over $800 to put back," said Michael.
Water is like gold to a rancher or farmer. When one pump was down, the fear was Michael might lose his crops.
So he took matters into his own hands.
Michael set up metal spike strips on a remote road that leads to the water pumps.
He waited, and waited. Until one day...
"They blew out their tires. They drove to the pumps. They stole the wire. They tried to keep driving away from here to get away," said Michael.
Michael caught the thieves red-handed.
Cannon Michael is now seen as a hero in an AG community where farmers say they're left to fend-off theft all alone.
"Our AG is just immense, it's huge," said Monterey County Sheriff's Department Detective Javier Galvan. He is the one-man AG Crime Unit in Monterey County and he wouldn't mind some help.
"The biggest thing that would help me and our AG Unit is more money," said Galvan.
Galvan said the success rate of recovering stolen property, in Monterey County at least, is actually up because farmers watch out for farmers.
Legislators are slowly taking notice. AG thieves often try to sell their stolen metals at recycling centers.
Now, a new law requires anyone who brings in metals to sell have to have their items photographed. And their information documented.
But that's only targeting one area of theft. 50,000 sprinkler heads were reported stolen over the past year. Make that hundreds of thousands of tractors stolen. And an immeasurable amount of crops.
So what happens when someone like Cannon Michael actually catches the crooks?
"The frustrating part is when we finally did catch somebody, nothing in the legal system was going to be done to them. It was very satisfying to ruin their day for a little while, but to have a system where they are going to be just released back in 30 days," said Michael.
And that leaves many farmers with the feeling that it is only a matter of time before they become the next AG theft target.
