Greek olive growers battle thieves as crop price rises

STORY: As the price of olive oil rises, Greek olive grower Panagiotis Tsafaras now has to patrol his groves twice a day

to fend off thieves intent on stealing his crop.

Last month, they took more than a tonne of his olives in one incident.

"It is the first time this is happening. We had never experienced anything like this in our region. It is a fact that when I saw it, on the one hand, I was shocked, I was sad, and on the other I thought: What's this, why is it happening?"

The answer lies in this year's very poor harvest - with the lowest yield in years.

That's mainly due to erratic weather conditions.

Storms, droughts and soaring temperatures have dried up the olives.

And the up to 50% decline in output has doubled olive oil wholesale prices to up to $9 per liter, government officials say.

Retail prices are reaching up to $15.

"We will be forced to install cameras, we will be forced to put GPS on trees, and possibly we will have to find someone and pay him - a security guard, to carry out patrols with a vehicle."

Tsafaras says thieves strike at night, using rods to beat the olives off the trees or silent electric chainsaws to cut entire branches that they load on pickup trucks.

To avoid being caught, they extract the oil in different areas from the region in which the crop was stolen.

Dimitris Plakonouris is an olive grower with 2,000 trees.

"The only measure we can take is to collect the olives as quickly as possible, so that they cannot get the chance to steal them from us, and to visit the fields regularly, because we cannot be in the fields all the time."

Greek police confirmed the rise in olive theft across the country.

Greece is the world's third-biggest producer of olive oil behind Italy and Spain, which have seen similar incidents.