- Agricultural Protection Branch launched in 2025
- $17.6 million in stolen produce recovered since January
- Over 2,200 charges laid, 196 reports filed
- Farm theft costs Jamaica up to $6 billion a year
The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s Agricultural Protection Branch has recovered more than $17.6 million worth of stolen agricultural produce, including cattle and goats, since January, according to Deputy Superintendent Tedroy Clarke, commander of the branch’s Area 3 division covering Clarendon, Manchester and St Elizabeth. More than 2,200 charges have been laid in connection with agricultural crimes, and the branch has received over 196 reports in the same period.
The branch itself is new, established in 2025 as a dedicated successor to the JCF’s older Praedial Larceny Unit, specifically charged with preventing, investigating and combating farm theft and other agricultural crimes as a standalone specialism rather than a side responsibility handled by generalist officers. That structural change addresses a complaint farming advocates have made for years: the same officers investigating murders, shootings and rape were also the ones handling farm theft, and it consistently got left behind.
The scale the new branch is up against is substantial and long-documented. Praedial larceny has cost Jamaican farmers an estimated $5 billion to $6 billion annually for over a decade, a figure that has barely moved despite successive government crackdowns going back to at least 2012, when officials publicly debated whether corporal punishment might deter offenders better than existing sanctions. A 2015 farmer receipt-book programme, requiring documentation of produce sold to prove legitimate ownership, was one earlier attempt at the same underlying problem the APB now tackles directly through vehicular checkpoints and community collaboration.
Minister of State Franklyn Witter, addressing a farmer sensitisation meeting at Denbigh Showground in September, reframed the fight in terms broader than arrests alone: disrupting the actual market for stolen produce and livestock, by getting buyers, transport operators and consumers to refuse suspect goods, matters as much as catching the thief in the field. Whether $17.6 million recovered against a $6 billion annual loss represents genuine early momentum for a year-old specialist branch, or a fraction too small to move the underlying number, is a question next year’s recovery figures will begin to answer.
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