Copper Theft

Times are tough and when times get tough the tough don't necessarily get going. In fact, in this case, tough times can lead to an increase in theft. Amazing as it seems, there are lots of copper thieves out there. Imagine this scenario. A farmer has thousands of acres under irrigation. It's the middle of the night and is relatively easy for some unscrupulous crook to sneak onto his acreage and steel copper wiring that is used in connecting devices to irrigation pivots. Not so fast says a company called AgSense out of South Dakota. Their Field Commander device is an advanced GPS-driven pivot monitor/control system that communicates via the digital cell network to provide near real-time information and up to the minute alarms to a producer's cellphone, smartphone or computer. AgSense employee Nancy Schiltz: "it is for theft prevention. It will send a text to the farmer in the event that wire is cut on it. How is business? I would think this is a must have. In certain areas it is. In Georgia we broke up a 10 ring theft down there. The farmer was good friends with the Sheriff and he told the Sheriff that if I call you in the middle of the night, you'd better be ready to go. Sure enough, he had a text message and the police deployed a helicopter and dogs and rounded up 10 people that were going around taking copper off of pivots."