Jamaica loses more than $14 billion annually to praedial larceny, the theft of agricultural produce and livestock, according to figures cited by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, a number the Gleaner has argued undercuts the popular framing of farm theft as a petty crime rather than a genuine threat to national food security.
The government stood up a dedicated Agricultural Protection Branch within the Jamaica Constabulary Force in 2025 specifically to prevent, investigate and prosecute farm theft. Between January and August 2026 alone, the APB recorded 3,622 arrests, 1,270 convictions and 270 reports across 119,489 farm visits, according to Minister of State Franklyn Witter. In Area 3, covering Clarendon, Manchester and St Elizabeth, officers have recovered more than $17.6 million in stolen produce and livestock since January, with more than 2,200 charges laid.
Part of what changed is investigative capacity. Historically, one of the biggest obstacles to prosecuting farm theft was the lack of specialised skills, evaluating crops and livestock as evidence, building a case a court would actually accept. The APBs Specialised Investigative and Intelligence Unit was built specifically to close that gap, and JCF officers are now being trained in agricultural evaluation to support prosecutions.
The economic case for taking praedial larceny seriously as organised crime rather than opportunistic pilfering is straightforward once the numbers are laid out: a $14 billion annual drain on a sector that is a meaningful share of Jamaicas GDP, concentrated disproportionately on smaller farmers who have the least capacity to absorb the loss. Minister Witter has framed it plainly: praedial larceny is everybody’s business, and the burden of stopping it falls as much on buyers, vendors and transport operators willing to ask where produce actually came from as on farmers themselves.
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