Amid on­go­ing de­struc­tion and hard­ship in the agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Los Iros, a farmer suf­fered fur­ther loss on Sun­day when a thief stole 3,000 pounds of his toma­toes.

Pres­i­dent of the Sus­tain­able Cli­mate Re­silience Ini­tia­tive, Ed­ward Mood­ie, is urg­ing the pub­lic to be on the look­out for the man he be­lieves will try to sell the stolen pro­duce.

Mood­ie, who has been as­sist­ing farm­ers since mas­sive land move­ment de­stroyed the road lead­ing to their farm­lands near­ly two weeks ago, said the theft took place dur­ing a vis­it by gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, and oth­er of­fi­cials.

He took to Face­book to high­light the in­ci­dent and in­form the pub­lic. While the meet­ing and tour were in progress, he said, an old sil­ver Fron­tier van with two oc­cu­pants ac­cessed the farmer’s gar­den from a back en­trance by cross­ing a di­lap­i­dat­ed bridge. The men loaded cro­cus bags filled with toma­toes in­to the van.

When the farmer dis­cov­ered the theft lat­er that day, he con­tact­ed the po­lice. On Mon­day, he was in­formed that the per­pe­tra­tor’s van had be­come stuck in the mud near the same bridge. The farmer again con­tact­ed the po­lice and told them he was block­ing the road to pre­vent the per­pe­tra­tor from leav­ing. How­ev­er, po­lice in­struct­ed him not to do so, and he com­plied. The of­fi­cers nev­er re­spond­ed.

About half an hour lat­er, an­oth­er van ar­rived and pulled the ve­hi­cle—still filled with toma­toes—out of the mud. The farmer con­front­ed the man as he was leav­ing, but was ver­bal­ly abused and threat­ened.

Mood­ie said the stolen toma­toes were ripe and half-ripe and would like­ly be of­fered for sale.

“Any­body see­ing this man com­ing up to sell these toma­toes, please call the po­lice. It is stolen toma­toes. Farm­ers have no right to be suf­fer­ing in the weath­er, the sun, the cold, the rain, the land­slide, the de­struc­tion in Los Iros, and then some men from out of Loren­sotte come and steal those toma­toes from you.”

Mood­ie said po­lice could have in­ter­cept­ed the per­pe­tra­tor if they had re­spond­ed prompt­ly. While he did not blame the of­fi­cers, he added, “I am hop­ing that in due time, af­ter the bud­get, there is fi­nanc­ing for po­lice sta­tions to be able to get the ve­hi­cles. This is not about the po­lice, but it shows that the sys­tem is not a 100 yet. They are work­ing on it and hope­ful­ly it will fix.”

Mean­while, he said the gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing re­pairs to the di­lap­i­dat­ed bridge used by the thief, to re­store ac­cess to the farm­ers’ gar­dens.