SPARTA, Mich. — Farmers across West Michigan have recently been stripped of electrical cables, and one farmer caught it on camera.
“Farming is a very capital-intensive business on low margins, and any extra cost is not helpful for the bottom line,” said Farmer Matt Vanderhyde.
The extra cost, in this case, is electrical cables stolen from farmers’ irrigation systems. And it’s mainly happening between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. “These irrigation pivots are driven by electric and essentially all of the wire that runs them has been taken off,” said Farm Agent for Newaygo Insurance Agency, Benn Starr.
Ryan Seyferth is the General Manager for Newaygo Insurance Agency. He says without the electrical cables, the irrigation systems, which are like giant sprinklers, become stuck like boat anchors in the middle of an open field. “It’s not only the theft of the wire, it's also the setbacks of the planting season," Seyferth adds.
Vanderhyde is the farmer who caught the theft on camera. “When you go out there and you're not expecting this kind of delay, and you've got to wait for someone to come out and fix it and get it going, that definitely puts more of a crunch on your timeline,” Vanderhyde said.
Vanderhyde is one of 15 farm customers across northern Kent, Newaygo, and Muskegon counties, who has had electrical cables stolen in the last week. “It’s copper wire, and so they're taking it for scrap metal, for, you know, a few hundred dollars worth, but for us to repair it, you know, it's thousands and thousands of dollars," Vanderhyde said. "So, it costs the farmer way more to fix it than they're actually getting value for in the scrap.”
The main message: it takes more than just farmers to put a stop to this. As Vanderhyde said, “It makes it difficult when commodities are already not doing great this year for a lot of farmers."
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