Editor in chief at IamExpat Media
A farmer in southern Germany woke up to a not-so-sweet surprise this weekend, discovering that almost his entire crop of strawberries had been stolen overnight.
The police in Lambsheim, a municipality not far from Mannheim, announced on Sunday that they are on the hunt for a sticky strawberry thief, after a 1,7-acre field was plundered in the early hours of Friday morning. The thieves stole almost the entirety of the unlucky farmer’s strawberry crop, worth around 700 euros.
Given the sheer amount of strawberries shifted, the police believe that they are looking for a group of several strawberry thieves, rather than a lone suspect. They suspect that several vehicles were used in the theft, and are appealing to the public for any potential witnesses to come forward.
This latest incident is not the first time strawberry farmers have been targeted by thieves in Germany. With around 140.000 tons of the berries produced each year in the federal republic, there’s plenty of opportunities for unscrupulous souls to pick what is not theirs. Last year, a group of thieves in Bad Sobernheim used hire cars to make their getaway with a bumper crop of strawberries, which they later sold on eBay.
Another curious case occurred in 2017, when a strawberry farmer in the German city of Konstanz received a note in which the anonymous author confessed to stealing some strawberries 25 years previously. The guilt-stricken thief had included a 20-euro note to atone for his sin. Perhaps the thieves in Lambsheim will be struck by similar pangs of remorse and turn themselves in.