Problem: theft of "certified organic" oranges on-tree have neither
serial numbers nor any positively identifying marks.

Solutions previously tried that were unsuccessful: Double seven foot
high fencing with a dead man's zone in between (like a military
installation) around my orchard's 2 mile perimeter, guards, dogs,
video surveillance, and individual intruders when caught weren't
prosecuted.  When I confronted produce wholesalers/stores selling my
stolen fruit they said I can't prove it and the police agreed.

Possible solution: Some method of positively indelibly marking several
hundred thousand on-tree oranges while still retaining "certified
organic" status.  I have large capacity mist blower spraying equipment
available.  Then I can positively identify my stolen fruit at grocery
stores.

Question 1: what materials are available for my "possible solution"
above while still retaining "certified organic" status?

Question 2: what other ideas do you have for positively
identifying/trailing my stolen fruit?

---

Request for Question Clarification by jbf777-ga on 12 Jul 2004 10:22 PDT

Hello, mortonhawaii -

How about something like this?

http://www.nelcoltd.com/efs.htm

jbf777

---

Request for Question Clarification by jbf777-ga on 12 Jul 2004 10:24 PDT

This solution should eliminate the source of your problem (intruders),
and save you effort and time having to bother with tracking,
prosecuting, etc.

jbf777

---

Clarification of Question by mortonhawaii-ga on 13 Jul 2004 13:24 PDT

Question Clarification and Thanks:					7/13/04

Also - sorry for being so long winded!

Mechanical barriers haven't worked.  I've contemplated a 16 foot high
concrete wall circling my orchard's 2 mile perimeter.  Currently I
have 2 fences 7 feet high, like a military installation, circling my
orchard's 2 mile perimeter.  The intruders go through, over, and under
my fencing.  One of many nights while chasing out intruders my guards
counted 26 flashlights.

Prior to the intruders entering they watch my guards' patterns.  Once
one of my guards passes they have time to enter before the next guard
comes.  My orchard is about 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile containing 152 acres
with 18,000 densely foliated trees to hide in.  From the tracks I've
found the intruder's sentries stand watch for my guards.  Within my
orchard it becomes a game of cat and mouse.

A large international company called Dole Foods planted an
experimental 100 acre mango orchard on the Island of Oahu.  After the
mango trees started bearing they lost virtually their entire crops 4
or 5 years in a row.  Dole tried everything they could think of to
stop their theft but finally decided to close down their experimental
orchards.  Dole concluded on Oahu, near the main markets of Honolulu,
they could grow fine mangos but they couldn't protect the mango crop
from thieves.  End of experimental mango orchard.

As to acceptable theft I'm losing more than 90% of my crop. With
Hawaiian weather flowering and subsequent fruit maturing is, more or
less, throughout the year. Worse yet, when the thieves beat my orchard
trees to knock the fruit off quickly they damage yet-to-mature fruit.

As to a few sample fruit being marked I tried that but then couldn't
find the few within the many.  All of my fruit need to be marked.

Suggested solutions for which I thank you all:

1. Add another layer of mechanical barrier - I've tried that without success.
2. Civil proceedings - Safeway and Foodland Hawaii were the two main
State-wide chain stores buying several hundred thousand dollars of my
stolen fruit.  When I checked with lawyers they all estimated a civil
suit at $300,000 plus, as well as several years in court.  The lawyers
all said if there were some way to positively identify my fruit on,
for example, Safeway's shelves then the legal cost would be very low.
3. Accept some theft - For a while I did that with the thieves just
taking more and more until there was virtually nothing left for me.
4. DNA testing - Sequencing to find genetic keys unique to my fruit's
bud line cost $40,000 to $80,000.  (If someone else, who may be
commingling their fruit with my stolen fruit, has my variety then that
work is lost.)  When I find fruit I suspect was stolen from me I have
to send it to and pay the sequencing lab for confirmation.  Then there
will be several years in court with expert witnesses saying "yes and
no" to the evidence.
5. So, that leaves out:  Parafins, vegetable oils, and sugars -
Without excessive tree harm oils are sprayed on orange trees to
control certain pests.  I'm not sure about spraying parafins and
sugars. Let's say I spray my crop with oil and a marker what kind of
relatively covert organic indelible marker would you suggest?  What
ideas do you have for parafins or sugars?
6. Kool-Aid or other types of visible coloring - If we can figure out
how to make these rain fast they may actually stop my theft problem. 
However, I really want to catch my stolen fruit on the grocers'
shelves.  Then, I can follow the paper trail of invoices back to the
first receiver (the guy buying my stolen goods from the thief.).  What
ideas do you have for a more covert organic marker? And, do you have
ideas on how to make the marker rain fast and indelible?
7. I'm very open to ideas on how, and what type of transmitter to
place in my fruit.  More specifically what do you suggest?

I hope I addressed all suggestions.  The suggestions I haven't tried
are using an oil, parafin, or sugar with a marker.  Let's explore
those ideas.

Also, I'm including the below web site for you to see how serious crop
theft is in one little area of Honolulu.  Crop theft is a State wide
problem here.  If you read the article carefully you'll see mechanical
barriers just don't work.

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/May/04/ln/ln13a.html

Mahalo,
Mort

---

Clarification of Question by mortonhawaii-ga on 13 Jul 2004 18:14 PDT

Dear Dr. Bob,

The reason crop theft has become so widespread in Hawaii is that most
of the grocers are totally unwilling to assist.  The grocer owners are
worried about liability lawsuits and bad publicity.   Certain key
employees within the grocer's are paid kickbacks for buying stolen
goods.

The oil/solvent hydrophobic fluorescing material you're thinking about
probably would work well for ID purposes.

I personally agree with you that with our crop losses organic
certification is secondary.  However my wife doesn't agree with me.

I know virtually nothing about fluorescing material.  I was thinking
to shine my UV light on locally available natural materials to find
something that would glow.  Do you have some ideas on which naturally
occuring hydrophobic materials might glow.  Then I could grind the
material up and dissolve it in alcohol or kerosene/oil.

Maybe local materials aren't a good idea and I should just buy a
commercially available material.

What are your thoughts?

Mahalo,
Mort

---

Clarification of Question by mortonhawaii-ga on 13 Jul 2004 21:28 PDT

Aloha jbf777

Thank you for your continuing mechanical barrier thoughts.  If you saw
my mechanical barriers you would understand they simply don't work. 
Over the internet I can't explicitly describe my barriers but they've
severely damaged many intruders.  Although no one I've physically
caught has been on drugs I've been told that certain intruders are
paid in addictive drugs - if they won't intrude then physically
addictive drugs are withheld.

Dealing with this problem here's an important concept I've learned.
The worker bee intruders don't fear being hurt or caught and to the
main business people they're expendable.  The otherwise legitimate
businesses and people within those businesses do fear being caught and
they don't believe they're expendable. They do believe they're above
the law. QED: To stop my ongoing orchard's crop theft I have to tag a
business with assets with people who believe they're not expendable.

Mahalo,
Mort

---

Clarification of Question by mortonhawaii-ga on 14 Jul 2004 15:05 PDT

Aloha Dr. Bob,

You've come up with some really great ideas.  I need a little time to
think about them.  We've never really had fruit stolen from our
packing house. When our fruit goes through our packaging house we
label them. This could act as your double control system.  I'm going
to Kailua-Kona today.  I'll go to the health food store there looking
for organic Kool-Aid.  This will also give me time to think about your
total picture.

Mahalo,
Mort

---

Clarification of Question by mortonhawaii-ga on 15 Jul 2004 17:46 PDT

Comments to Dr. Bob, Probono, Justed, JBF777, crythias-ga, and Pafalafa-ga	

7/15/04

Before I make individual comments I want to thank each and every one
of you for sharing your ideas with me.  What I'm writing above my
individual responses are another part of the theft puzzle here.

I'm going to tell you a story which will illuminate something not well
understood. This story was told to me by a friend of a friend who's in
a relatively high state law enforcement position. He told me he can't
help me because my problem is under county jurisdiction.

He said 25 years ago when he moved from Oahu to Hawaii Island there
was an incense shop with a shoplifting problem. The shopkeeper caught
many shoplifters but couldn't get the police to arrest them for
stealing a 25¢ incense stick - thus legitimizing shoplifting and
almost putting the owner out of business. Enter my friend's friend
Lenny. Lenny finds a policeman willing to make the arrest. The
prosecuting attorney's office refused to prosecute for 25¢. Lenny
finds a prosecutor willing to prosecute. Lenny has to find a different
policeman to arrest another shoplifter. Another shoplifter is arrested
and the prosecutor prepares the case with the judge unwilling to hear
a 25¢ case. Lenny has to find a judge willing to hear the case and
then repeat his previous steps. The first time the judge had
difficulty figuring out a sentence for a 25¢ theft. As more cases were
heard the sentencing became more routine. Lenny told me this story
because orange/crop theft is viewed as a 25¢ crime.

Wednesday I noticed a yellow comb previously dropped by an intruder
was moved a short distance. Tuesday my wife found a burlap style bag
made with a black plastic material that we think is used to move our
oranges off our farm. 2 months ago I found 6 soda cans a short
distance from the bag. Wednesday (yesterday) I called the police to
come pick up these bits of evidence. The officer picked up the comb
with his fingers (fingerprints), refused to pick up the bag, and soda
cans until I spoke to him very strongly. The officer had been told to
bring 3 evidence bags and a receipt for evidence but he refused. I'm
telling you this because this is another problem that needs
resolution.



Aloha Dr. Bob, this is going to be a long answer - sorry.

I've tried the legislative approach and it doesn't work.  One thing
good did come out of my legislative work: a law requiring
documentation of ownership of produce is on the books but instead of
being in the penal code it was in the agricultural code section - now
the police know about this law.

This is more or less, how this type of stolen property is sold.  A
Kona coffee farmer told me a fellow came to him with burlap bags full
of coffee trying to sell the beans.  The coffee farmer recognized the
beans as those grown by his neighbor.  He refused to buy but didn't
make a police report.  The rest of this story is speculation.  He told
me he thought the thief would just keep going to individual coffee
farmers until he found one willing to buy stolen beans.  Then that
coffee farmer would just sell the stolen beans along with his own
farm's beans.  Thus circumventing your license idea.

If this story is true then my oranges are probably being sold to
another farmer who sells them along with his own products.  Another
variation to this theme is my thieves are selling to a wholesaler very
cheaply with the wholesaler saying he bought my stolen oranges from so
and so.  By properly following the invoice trail it's really easy to
prove the wholesaler is lying but I can't get police cooperation. 
Since the police don't have in-house auditors they told me it would
cost too much money to outsource an accountant.  I found a willing
accountant but the willing accountant, after listening to my local
police captain, said all he would be able to prove is the wholesaler
is a lousy bookkeeper.  None of the Hawaii County Police I've met are,
in an accounting sense, numerically literate.

I have a machine that labels 90 to 95% of my fruit.  You've probably
seen fruit with such labels.  This could act as the second marking. 
Since my fruits are well known as a gourmet designer citrus, Ka'u Gold
- website kaugold.com -email address kaugold@hialoha.com, the grocers
make a separate display for my products.  Mine also retail for 50 to
100% more than my competition.

I've thought about the problem of washing off any markings.  The
markings have to be indelible.  Yesterday I spoke with a Dr. Bolton of
Bolton Photosciences.  He said if I  spray a dissolved fluorescing
material in methanol as the methanol volatilizes it may make the
marker part of the fruit.  He said I have to experiment.  He suggested
products that are insoluble in water, colorless, fluoresces, and
soluble in methanol.  As another carrier he suggested rubbing alcohol.
 The problem is I don't know anything about this type of chemistry.

Yes, I can use fertilizers.  I'm supposed to avoid chloride
fertilizers but sulfates, oxides, and most others, are fine.  Every
few years I add manganese and zinc sulfate to my soil.

Mahalo,
Mort

Aloha Probono,

Thank you for your suggestions to think like a marketer instead of a
grower.  In fact, as plan B, I'm subdividing a 202 acres parcel I
purchased in 1997 for orchard expansion into 10 scenic lots 20 acres
each abutting the State Forest Reserve.  This will net me enough for
my wife and I to retire quite nicely.  Plan A would be to stop the
theft allowing normal farming operations.  You're right, whatever I've
tried and whatever I try in the future may not be economically viable
for an orchard operation.  Plan C is rezoning and subdividing my
citrus groves allowing me to sell off home sites and for me to keep my
farm home.

Mahalo,
Mort

Aloha Justed,

Thank you for your suggestion.  I've thought about injecting a few
fruit with something.  I've also considered spraying an individual
field with a chemical not registered for use on oranges.  Both would
contaminate our food supply.  Since I didn't sell them I wouldn't be
liable.

However, the problem with this type of idea is we're thinking like normal people.

 Let's take 2 realities I've uncovered.  

I have a camouflaged armed guard posted on a knoll overlooking my
orchard.  He sees flashlights panning skyward in my fields looking for
oranges hanging in my trees.  He calls me on a cell phone.  The cell
phone light gives his location away to the six men acting as officers
of the gang using the knoll as a command post.  My guard jumps over
the knoll's side into the jungle.  3 of the 6 men are armed.  My guard
sees 1 of the 3 with a flashlight in his left hand and a pistol with a
silencer in his right hand trying to find and kill him.  Do you think
these people are going to care about a customer complaint?

Another reality comes from a previous local police sargent.  The
sargent said he won't let his officers patrol my place because I've
intruders hiding up in my trees with 3 foot long machetes to cut off
his officers' heads. Do you think these people are going to care about
a customer complaint?

The worker thieves are criminally insane which also includes just
regular insanity.  The buyers may also be insane to be involved but
somehow they rationalize their actions.

Mahalo,
Mort

Aloha JBF777

Thank you for your suggestion.  Forgive me for saying this but the
physical barrier you're referring to would easily be defeated by
falling a tree on it.  An orchard is made up of a lot of fruit trees. 
There are tall trees surrounding my perimeter and at intervals within
my orchard to stop wind - called windbreak trees.  Falling these
windbreak trees would easily defeat your system.

Mahalo,
Mort

Aloha Pafalafa-ga

Thank you for your suggestions.

Your idea of a marker is what I think may work.  Please tell me more.

Mahalo,
Mort

Aloha Crythias-ga

Thank you for your suggestion.  I think both Pafalafa and Dr. Bob have
good ideas.  The next

---

Request for Question Clarification by jbf777-ga on 15 Jul 2004 19:15 PDT

Mort -

Can't put the fence around the windbreak trees?  Or some sufficient
distance from them?

jbf777

---

Clarification of Question by mortonhawaii-ga on 15 Jul 2004 21:18 PDT

To: jbf777

First, I want to thank you for your input.

I must not have stated properly that I've previously erected two
barbed wire fences 7 feet high with barbed wire at 6 inch intervals
with a dead man's zone in between like the military does.  In addition
I used my 280 kva 3 phase 480 VAC Hawaiian Electric Transformer
purchased for my well to power the fencing system. The other
mechanical barriers I've installed I don't want to say but, in time,
they were all defeated.

My guards have been ambushed and beaten up, shot at, chased, and their
family's threatened.  The yellow comb I last mentioned was found in a
position wherein the bad guys are keeping an eye on my front door and
into my livingroom.

If you check my web site kaugold.com designed to attract
out-of-my-area soldiers-of-fortune you'll have an inkling of what I've
tried.  Any guard hired from within my area is subject to being
identified and his family attacked.

At this juncture I believe I need a system to positively identify my
stolen oranges on a grocers shelf.  The two largest chain stores in
Hawaii are Foodland and Safeway and they're willing to knowingly buy
stolen product for resale. The paper trail of invoices exists but I
don't have a way of absolutely proving they're my oranges.  Most of
the other chain stores are unwilling to knowingly buy stolen produce. 
If I can land either Safeway or Foodland with my positively identified
stolen fruit on their shelves then I would get criminal convictions
and disrupt the organized crime groups.  I know I'll never stop a
passerby from taking a few oranges.  However a passerby isn't going to
try to defeat my barriers.

What I'm descibing to you is truly bizarre.  When I confronted one
produce wholesaler found in the chain of invoices regarding my stolen
oranges his knuckles whitened on the knife he was using for trimming
onions but then relaxed when he said to me, "you can't prove it". 
Unfortunately he's right.

I hope this answers your thoughts. Any mechanical barrier can be defeated.

On another note, like anyone else my wife and I want to someday
retire.  Fortunately, I'm somewhat good at real estate investing.  By
2004 end or begining 2005 we'll be financially free to do what ever we
want.  However, I really want to make a difference - I want to convict
the very few willing buyers of stolen products and stop Hawaiian
agri-terrorism.

Much mahalo,
Mort

Whatever you do, you will still face the problem of providing
satisfactory 'proof' and the possibility that the police will not want
to know.

Perhaps, you could plant electronic 'bugs' in some of the fruit and
monitor it on its subsequent travels.

In the UK, we have criminal and civil proceedings where the 'burden of
proof' is very different. With the first it's 'beyond reasonable
doubt' but in the second it's 'on the balance of probabilities', a
much less exacting requirement.

If the rules are similar in Hawaii then maybe you could take a civil
action and sue the perpetrators for damages.

Maybe?

But you need to look at the costs which may not be trivial. It could
be cheaper to accept that there will always be a certain level of
'wastage'.

I hope that this is not a bitter fruit to swallow.

All the best

Bryan

People have used DNA testing to identify hardwood trees that were stolen from land.

This process is probably cost prohibitive in the case of a whole
orchard, but I don't know. If you have a hundred samples, you may only
need a couple markers.

Spraying:  First, you want to keep your organic label.  Second, you've
got to be able to spray a boatload of this stuff.  Third, I'm thinking
water resistant, but not water proof? Fourth, it can't kill the trees.

So, that leaves out:  Parafins, vegetable oils, and sugars.  

Another thought would be some kind of powdered orange dyestuff.  Like
powdered orange food color or KOOL-AID(sugar free? or just use the
stuff without any sugar).  When it was dry, it would be almost
impossible to see.  It shouldn't hurt your trees if the solution is
dilute enough.  However, when the fruit is handled.... well lets just
say you'll be able to catch them red(or orange) handed. It would wash
off with a good trip through some water.  I would test this on a small
tree first.  Try several colors.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Second, as probono has said, Lo-Jacking a few of your fruits seems
reasonable.  The issue becomes if someone were to bite into said
fruit, you might encounter some liability.

------------------------------------------------------------

Last, you could sue some of the people selling your fruit.  First, the
thefts probably fall in the range of small claims(less than
3,000-$5,000).  In most states the burden of proof is preponderance of
evidence, not resonable doubt.  The fact that you know(or seem to)
that those people took your fruit, there must be enough circumstantial
evidence.  Suing a few of the people who are doing it might be enough
of a deterrent that future theives will stay away, even if you lose
your case.  You can also sue the wholesalers if you have a
preponderance of evidence that they knew or had a reasonable suspicion
that the fruit they were selling was stolen.

I like dr-bob's idea about the powder :) I'd probably go with some
inorganic-looking powder like blue, though. It may not likely get
picked, is much easier to spot leakage/drainage if wash attempt, ...
very identifiable. It'll probably be much easier to claim that you
know it's yours if your oranges "leak" blue versus orange. Now,
getting your customer to buy tinted blue oranges, that's a trick :).
If you're lucky enough that the coating does wash off completely, all
the better. But, just like all the carpet cleaners warn, try a small
section, first.

Though the humor might be lost on this aspect, this situation does
remind me of a joke about some kids who stole from a pumpkin patch.
The owner, quite irritated, decided to stop it by placing a sign in
the patch "One of these pumpkins is poisoned." While it worked for a
little while, the owner was disturbed to find that overnight one night
the sign had been changed to "Two of these pumpkins are poisoned."

If people, guns, walls, fences, and dogs aren't enough, maybe a change
of tactic along these lines could be interesting. Actually, even doing
it will be an interesting tactic because the news will be pretty
widespread that these large supermarkets are selling poisoned fruit.
Not that *YOU* sold the fruit... you know what trees to harvest. You
don't even have to let anyone outside know, unless there are liability
laws in your area. Even still, Danger, Keep Out signs should be
sufficient warning, especially if the signs can be easily seen in the
night.

You know the invisible hand-stamps that clubs use for re-entry -- the
ones that show up under UV light.  Sounds to me like you need
something along those lines:

==========

http://www.bodyguardsecurity.co.uk/suv.htm

BodyGuard Security is well known in the market place as a stockist of
specialist ultra-violet products.

This range of products is used for invisible marking, but to show up
under exposure to ultraviolet light.

...Aerosol, especially manufactured for spray application. Suitable
for commercial/domestic use, including:
- marking of heavy machinery
- office equipment
- forestry and agricultural products.

The ideal choice for the larger marking jobs.
[CFC free]

==========

I wouldn't go with an off-the-shelf product, though.  Work with a
supplier to formulate an invisible UV-marker that can be sprayed
through your equipment, is non-toxic, and allows you to preserve your
organic status.

Good luck


pafalafa-ga

Morton,

Whoa! I was unaware of the dollar range you were working in.

In this case, I think there are a few ideas you might want to look into.

Last Fence Idea:  Dig a trench between your two fences with a shear
face. Chunk in a few jagged rock to slow down the erosion process. 
Add snakes and hungry alligators if desired.  Hey, it seemed to work
ok in the 16'th century. ;-) It was just a suggestion.

First, lets get back to the KOOL-AID idea. I would mess around with
this and here's why:  I tend to think it will still be rain fast for a
couple of weeks maybe longer.  The dye will just drip and collect at
the bottom of the oranges at least that's where all the dirt collects
on my oranges(I have an orange tree in my back yard).  As long as
there is no sugar in the KOOL-AID, i think it will dry to an almost
white powder, kind of like SEVIN dust, and it's cheap cheap.

My original thought was to use a peptide, with a unique sequence, that
is fairly hydrophobic, yet fairly water soluble to spray on your
oranges.  These may be rain fast. This would require a few tests.  To
prove theft, all you need to do is wash it off and sequence the
peptide. With a dye, they might be able to argue their way out of it. 
With a peptide, not only is it a unique identifier, you can write your
code in the sequence.  Cost for this will likely be in the $5-15K
range for enough peptide to spray and still be detectable in a lot of
fruit.  Nice thing here, not particularly toxic, essentially natural. 
Would require someone with knowledge of the field to set you up.

The reason I didn't like oils and parrafins was because of your
certified organic status.  I don't know anything about it, but if
you're losing 90% of your crop, certified organic I think is a
secondary issue, no? In that case, there are probably plenty of dyes
that are oil soluble that glow under a UV light, such that making a
case against someone would be pretty straightforward. I would have to
research this. In many cases, you would only need the tiniest amount
of dye(say part per million in your spray).  Under the right UV light,
you'd be able to identify(pick the color fluoresces, and pick your
wavelength of fluorescent dye eg. the wavelength of light necessary to
get it to produce that color) to a pretty good certainty, that indeed
the fruit came from you.  Depending on what you use, it could be hard
as hell to wash off because of the oily nature of citrus skin.(like
trying to get paraffin off a cucumber) Harmless and non toxic? I don't
know yet.  As I'm just a po scientist and not an illustrious google
answer guy, it would take some time for me to look into something that
was non-toxic food grade, oil soluble, and near invisible.

Last is, the issue of marking fruit.
http://www.safetyandsecuritycenter.com/gpschillocwa.html Basically a
LO-JACK for kids.  I don't know if you can fit one in an orange.

It sounds to me like the grocers are willing to work with you.  You
could also try RFID tags.  These are basically little tags about the
size of a pencil lead(usually encased in glass or plastic) These can
be placed in one or two fruits and read using an RF reader. If they
were in with a box of 100, you could get the RF code of those 2
oranges in a box the size of a TV set. They don't track where your
orange is, but they will identify it to an absolute certainty.  If you
placed them on say, a couple of trees in your orchard, and did not
pick from them, I think you can avoid the liability issues if they get
stolen and someone eats an RF Tag.  Now all you need to do is go
shopping with your RF reader, or have some middleman do it. Tags are
virtually indestructable, last indefinitely, and cost around 1-3 bucks
a piece.  I don't know what a reader would cost.

Mort,
I was absolutely stunned at the magnitude of the problem.  Here in
california, it turns out Avocado theft is rampant as well.

The rub in all of this is that whatever you use, you kind of want it
to come off, and be non-toxic.  I spent a few minutes looking a
frankenfood dyes.  None of them seemed to be fluorescent.  So the
regular red dye # whatever, just won't cut it.  There are other issues
there too.  Meaning that these are designed to DYE stuff.  That is
they will likely soak into the cellulose of your plants.  Not a happy
thing.

I was thinking more about the KOOL-AID thing.  You gotta give this a
try.  Ever wonder why your kids lips are orange after drinking some? 
This stuff might soak right into the surface of your oranges but only
wash off with a good water bath not rain. And it might not even come
off easily then.

Turmeric, a common spice used in indian curries, is said to be quite
fluorescent. I am beginning to think that it might just work ok too. 
By itself it doesn't have much of a taste. It should be hydrophobic
enough that if you mix it up with a little citrus oil or whatever you
use, it may just stick pretty good.  Again spray it on, check it out,
give it a bath and see how much sticks around.

Fluorescence is a tricking thing.  The way it works is, you shine
light of one wavelength (say 254 nm of black light) and the substance
emmits or "fluoresces" a different wavelength(say bright green 524).

I'll post more later...
Rob

Mort -

I don't have any ideas for marking the fruit, primarily because your
fruit is certified organic.

Even if you are able to catch one or two people stealing your fruit,
and you even are able to prosecute them, you still aren't eliminating
the total problem, because you're not going to go after everyone who
steals, and there will always be theft where there is something to
steal.  Hence, forgive me for continuing on the physical blockade
point, but let me just ask:

Let's say you dig a moat around your entire property that's 5 feet
deep.  You poor concrete into it.  So now you have 5 feet deep
hardened concrete around the entire perimeter's ground.  You install a
10 foot high electric fence into that.  No one is getting past the
fence, period.  They can't get through it -- they're bolted with
electricity.  They can't get over it -- same problem.  They can't get
under it, the concrete prohibits them.  Theoretically they could use a
jackhammer, but is this really going to happen?  The time and effort
it would take for someone to do that would make it impractical for a
thief to try, especially since you could have video cameras and and
guards who will have ample time to see someone bringing in that kind
of get-up to get into your orchard.

What are you thoughts on this?

jbf777

Wow, Mort ...

Like the other Commenters, I hadn't realised the scale of the problem
which is mega serious.

However, I have a way forward that I shall now outline.

1: I agree that growing 'Organic' is irrelevant when your harvest is being stolen.

2: It's hard to compete with systematic theft and whatever you do it's
going to be very expensive and will it be cost effective?

3: And can you compete? Stolen fruit is always going to be cheaper as
well as (reputedly) tasting better.

4: So, (wait for it) you quit growing the stuff and concentrate just on marketing.

Me? I just love my glass of fresh orange juice with my brekkie but I
would never dream of squeezing my own.

So start thinking like a marketing man and not like a fruit grower.

Where can you buy the stuff?

How can you package and brand it?

My thinking is this ...

Once you have abandoned the orange trees, you will be able to operate
within a much more defendable facility.

Well that's it but, whatever you decide ...

The Very Best of Luck! 

Bryan

Inject a number of fruit with an indelible dye (like the dye used to
catch thieves)- secretly mark the trees so you know which one's have
the dyed fruit.  Wait for the result with the backlash to the
retailers for damages.  Only you know where the fruit is and it makes
the theft risky business.

Ed

Hi Mort,

So I've been giving your problem a lot of thought. Now I've got more
questions than answers.

Legislatively, why can't all of the growers organize and make it so
the wholesalers must buy from a licensed grower?  If they can't
produce a license number that is verifiable, they can be sued by a
growers association and put out of business.

Next, how do you know if your crop was stolen, or legally purchased? 
Even if you mark it, if your legal fruit winds up in the food chain,
how do you tell them apart?

So suppose you marke a big black X on the fruit.  Aside from aesthetic
problems of marketing etc, would you need to be able to take your mark
off, when you go to sell that produce? Such will be a problem if you
indelibly mark your fruit. No?  As such, the fluorescent dye becomes
and issue, because the crooks will just start washing it off.

Does certified organic mean you're allowed to use fertilizer? If so,
what kind?  Suppose your soil is defficient in copper, can you add a
copper suppliment? Could you spray, say, KOOL-AID(non toxic, food
grade, chemical)? Inorganic fertilizer?(meaning something that had
minerals in it)
  

I actually have what I think is a pretty good idea. But the drawbacks
are as follows.  1.) You won't be able to tell by looking at a box of
oranges which ones are yours until you analyze them, which would take
about 10 minutes per orange.(could sample a 100 oranges in a day no
problem).  2.) The marker of your oranges will be in essence
permanent(yet non-toxic, non-flavored, undetectable to the casual
observer).  3.) It will take some expertise and equipment that is
likely available at a local university with a decent chemistry
department(UH will have for sure) 4.) It will take a few months to get
up and running. 5.) It may be difficult to remove your marker.

The upside is as follows:  After it was up and running, if all the
growers got together, they could easily mark all of their fruits and
identify which orange came from which orchard. You might be able to
'double mark' the ones that were approved for sale. It would be really
hard for a crook to fool the system, because the marker literally will
embed itself into the oranges(non-toxic, invisible). If proven to
work, will get a lot of press and call attention to your plight.

Let me know what you think.
Rob

Perhaps spray them with fluorescein?

Hi Mr. Morton:
This is going to be the most stupid replay you will get for sure, but
let's call it a "common sense" replay :-)
1- You are investing many thousands just to try to stop others to
steal your oranges.
2- How much money are you investing in trying to keep your oranges?
3- How much money do you lose with the stolen oranges?
4- How much money the people that steal your oranges get? Probably few cents.
5- Why do they steal your oranges? to get some coins.
6- How much profit does the reseler get? 10 times or more than what
the stealers get from them.

Solution:
Make your calculations and offer a "reward". The more you can get from
your production, the more you will share with the ones taking care of
the production, not your own workers there, but the "others" (let's
say it straight: the same that rob you)
Put the ads in your town, take some "locals" to take care of that and
give them some profit to share with the rest. Tell them to organize
the system, that you are open minded enough to help.
They will stop their own people because the profit coming from you is
going to be bigger than the profit they get from the reseller.

Money rules. You'll never get the perfect system because human beings
are always more clever than any system, specially if they do not have
their needs covered and specially because you have lot of people
working for you that "belong" to the same group of people that are
stealing you. I don't mean that they are the robbers but they have
their feeling to their own people. Pobably lot of people in the police
have the same feeling too, though not being robbers at all. Let's call
it a "brotherhood" feeling, they do not betray the others.

So, you can choose, you invest for nothing and finish like Dole or you "share".
There's lot to understand in some countries and lot to understand
about people too. Where you borned in Honolulu?
May be your gards are a little bit blind from time to time? How much
money have you spent in your sofisticated systems and how much money
do you spend in salaries?
How many days a kid can eat there with the 50 dollars you pay for a replay here?

We have an old saying in Spanish: "If you can not beat them, join them"
Not a technological solution but a "social" solution perhaps.
Good luck.
Rosa - Argentina

http://www.zoetecnocampo.com
(Sorry about my English - If you wish take a look at my site may be it
will help to understand)

Sorry Mr. Morton, it's me again.
I checked the link you sent. If you are close to that area, things are
very clear. This is not a poverty problem but a big corruption
problem. You can forget layers and other similar kind of staff.
Somebody from top is making very good business with your oranges.
Better to invest big money to try to find out who is the "padrino" (goodfather).
Good luck again.

From your description it sounds like a war zone.  I know you think
physical barriers won't work, but how about digging a 8 ft. trench,
pouring 20 ft. of concrete (12 ft. above ground), smothering the
entire wall, top and both sides with spiraled barbed electrical wire,
and then mounting spotlights to light up the entire perimeter and
hidden video cameras to record the thieves in action, with both the
spotlights and cameras enclosed in bullet proof glass?

In addition, you could take a 30-50 ft. strip and fill it with 3 ft.
of water.  Add alligators or poisonous snakes if you want.  Post a
couple bulletproof guard towers and arm the guards with tranquilizer
guns.

How about covering the entire ground with some kind of
worse-than-skunk odor-creating substance so the theives smell for a
week after they pass through the area?  Or some kind of sedative that
immobilizes them?

I've got more ideas, but I think you get the point.  I'm sure the
major factor there is cost, and if it costs more to protect your crop
than it benefits you to grow it, then the laws of economics says
you're out of business, at least with that specific endeavor.

I like the idea of RFID tags (a google search will give you tons of
info on this technology) which you could insert into a bunch of the
orange peels before harvest time arrives.  This seems it would provide
proof positive identification of your oranges at the grocery store. 
As long as the tags are inconspicuous enough and aren't physically
identifiable, the only way for the thieves to get around this would be
to buy a compatible RFID reader and start sorting through all the
oranges using the reader to sort out all the ones you tagged.

Some kind of marker only scientifically identifiable would be a great
idea, though I have no idea whether this is possible or how to
implement it.

On the legislative front, if the legislature was behind you, it seems
like they could require licensing of the amount of acres of an
agricultural product and recordkeeping on the sale of the product (how
much, when, where, to whom).  Require stores to only purchase from
licensed growers.  Add up how much was bought from whom and calculate
using the yields from that year which grower is selling more than he
could possibly have grown.  Require the stores to submit numbers that
add up.  Require that the stores and growers numbers fit together
properly.  If the thieves had no where to sell the oranges, there
wouldn't be much point in taking them.  This, of course, is assuming
that at some level the government is not corrupt and is willing to
address the issue.

Well, that's my take.

I think that i have the solution that includes a physical barrier as
well as significantly lower surveilance costs.

http://www.zarebasecurity.com/guardtower.htm

This system is a physical barrier that has the option of being
electrified.  The beauty of the system is that any attempted breach
can be detected down to the exact post in less than one second.  A pan
and tilt camera can be attached to zoom to that point immediately, or
a siren, dialer or any other device would be activated upon movement.

The system has been tested with the Port of Tacoma, Phoenix airport
and the US Army.

As far as a barrier/detection system, this is perfect.

haven't heard from Mort for a long time?  I would be really interested
to know how things are progressing...

Sounds to me that the problem is not so much the stealing of the fruit
(although this is a problem) but more the inequality of the setup. 
You say that you will retire in a few years time and that you have
been lucky in real estate, perhaps you wish to make a stand so that
this will not happen to other farmers in the area?

I can only see one solution, and it's not digging 50 foot moats around
your orchard or even marking your fruit, my solution is similar to the
one you have already started here.  I would sugest that if this is a
problem on such a large scale, then you should write to every media,
get this into the public, get some interest in the topic, talk to your
local politician he should at least listen, maybe get a famous
resident to champion this cause, put a reward up - make it a public
statement, but be clear that the main message is not that you are
losing revinue, but you care about the community you live in and want
to keep it safe.

Here is your solution:
Give the "legit" retailers incentives NOT to purchase stolen goods.
Tell the retailers that you have poisoned your ENTIRE crop of fruit
and that you will not sell any to them because you do not want anyone
to get hurt. Let the media know this as well. The supermarkets sure
don't want to face the possibility of lawsuits from selling poisoned
fruit, so they will not have a demand for your "poisoned" fruit
through the black market. You will definitely have to take a financial
hit for a year or two, but if you can eliminate the demand for stolen
fruit then maybe you can eliminate the supply (the people stealing).
Can you tell I teach economics with all this jargon?

Good luck...hope it helps.

No, Professorman ... Not a good idea!

Please stick with Economics, where (quite rightly) nobody takes any notice.

But it can work in theory...so it MUST be true :)

Professorman, 

If you do that then you are infact shooting yourself in the foot, when
you have stopped the stealing you must then start to convince the
supermarkets to buy your products again, however increasing demand
will once again increase the stealing....

Agreed!!! Perhaps I was a bit hasty with my solution. Allow me to
modify my answer now that I was able to sleep on the issue (ahhh the
free time that comes with academia). Spread the rumor that ONLY SOME
of the fruit was poisoned. The grower knows which ones were poisoned,
the theives do not. NOW there are incentives for the retailers to
purchase the fruit only from the grower (who will not sell the
poisoned fruit) and not from the theives (who may have the poisoned
fruit which will lead to poor publicity, legal action, etc. for the
retailers).

Sorry, legal action against the theives by the by the buyers? Yep
sounds like a good idea...Hmmm, but if your gonna knowingly buy stolen
fruit why would you get the law involved?  Not only that but if he
goes about poisening some of his fruit (which is rather silly) and
this does get into the public - therefore possibly killing somebody,
where's the logic in that? yeah possibly the supermarket will stop
buying the stolen goods (even if they dont know its stolen...) but
this kid/granny/wife/husband (whoever died) will be the end result of
what is essentially blackmail.

Just to clarify from my original post. I don't recommend ACTUALLY
poisoning ANY of the fruit, I am actually suggesting a relatively
legal approach to this. Just make it known (lie) that you did. The
supermarket won't purchase the stolen fruit because that would believe
that it MAY contain the poison (since the theives wouldn't know what
was poisoned and what wasn't poisoned). The supermarkets want to avoid
legal action from their customers (NOT from the theives) that could
stem from consumption of poisoned fruit. (Note: I am enough of a
realist to know that this solution is FAR from realistic, but it is
definitely a fun logic/economics problem).

is this some kind of fuzzy logic?

Morton, 

If your still there... I would like to know how this is going?  What
did you do in the end?

BB

You need a few bottles of green (or blue?  purple?) food coloring and
a syringe.  Select a group of trees that you will not harvest from. 
Inject a random number of oranges on that tree with green food
coloring.

When it hits the news that stores are selling green oranges, they will
have to clean up their act.  You don't need the help of any
authorities or government.

thanks,
fj

I work in the Organic Food area, and unfortunately this has to occur. 
Unfortuately, any crime has to occur.  Greed and Money.  Without
"chemically" modifying your plants, you don't have many options. 
You'd probably lose your Organic status all too easily.  However, the
last response about injecting oranges with green coloring may help. 
Use a Spinach Extract. It is "Organic Compliant".  RFI Ingredients in
NY supplies that.  If enough people get enough bad ones, then, no one
will buy them anymore.  The problem is introducing bacterium that may
kill the orange before it is "picked".

A couple of suggestions:  I did read many of the responses, but I kind
of skipped through a lot of them because quite simply, I didn't want
to read about your troubles anymore.  You've been through heck
obviously.

The Anarchist's Cookbook might offer a few good solutions.
Here are a few other good books.....
21st Century Revenge: Down and Dirty Tactics for the Millennium by Victor Santoro
Revenge Encyclopedia by Unk
Don't Get Mad - Get Even : The Fine Art Of Revengemanship by Jane Inder
Screw Unto Others : Revenge Tactics For All Occasions by George Hayduke
Get Even : The Complete Book Of Dirty Tricks by George Hayduke
Get Even 2 : More Dirty Tricks From The Master Of Revenge by George Hayduke


Just remember.  These are dirtbags you're dealing with.  Outsmart
them. I'm sorry that's all can I offer.  You can always befriend the
local Martial Arts instructor and ask him if he'd like to teach a
couple of classes under the lights some night.  Offer to have him and
his students come out, you'll cook dinner, have a good time, provide
the bright lights, and someone might start getting a little concerned.

Also, talk to your Organic Certifier, be it QAI, Oregon Tilth, or
whomever, and see if they are encountering similar problems with other
customers.  You might just meet the right person who has the right
solution.

Aloha, Morton.  Here is what I would do:  Start calling people in
biomedical sciences at UH-Manoa and ask if anyone happens to be
willing grow up some GFP for you in large quantity.  GFP is 'green
fluorescent protein', a completely nontoxic protein originally from
jellyfish, widely used these days for biological studies.  You can
grow up giant vats of it cheaply & easily by expressing it in bacteria
and doing industrial-scale protein purification.  Then you could mix
the GFP into some wax or oil (to keep it from washing off easily in
rain) or something and spray it on your crop.  You oranges are easily
identified under UV light (they will fluoresce green).  There are red
(RFP) and blue (BFP) and yellow (YFP) etc versions too, but green is
the easiest to come by.  If you want to get really fancy, you could
engineer a specific 'bar code' into your particular GFP (in case this
idea gets too popular).  Now that I know from your question that crop
Identification is such potentially big business, I actually just now
thought about starting a company.  Do you think the GFP would maintain
the 'certified organic' status of the product?  The technology is
easy.  Hey -- we could be partners.  I'd love to go back to Hawaii
(where I worked at a lab tech and started my Ph.D.)  The best idea
would be to actually tag your crop with a biomarker, or 'genome tag',
but I suppose making any part of your crop actually transgenic would
kill the organic certification, huh?

And $20-40k to develop a plant genotyping assay?  Sounds kind of high.
 I would think some simple RFLP mapping or SNP mapping or some short
sequencing would be enough to identify your plants -- no different
than 'DNA fingerprinting' in criminal cases.  Same techniques, except,
as you mention, there a whole bunch of potential clones around.  That
could be part of the business too.  If you wanted to check around UH,
you would want to ask whether there are any plant ecologists around
doing any genotyping (or SNPs, microsatellite markers, etc)