Ee i ee i o
Cops on the agriculture beat
YOU PROBABLY see cops regularly when you go out to run errands. A motorcycle unit might pull up beside you at a red light. A state trooper may be monitoring for speeders on the side of the interstate. But some law enforcement officers are less obvious, and we’re not talking about the ones undercover.
There are other law enforcement officers besides city cops and sheriff’s deputies. The USPS has police. They go after people who commit mail fraud and other postal crimes. And Arkansas has agriculture police, something we’d bet a good chunk of the state’s population didn’t know about until they read the paper this week. William Sanders on the news side wrote a great article detailing what agriculture police get up to. Turns out it’s a lot.
“The Arkansas Department of Agriculture’s law enforcement division works with agencies in and out of the state for agriculture-related issues,” the article said. “According to Chief Billy Black, the agency exists to help agricultural producers that have been wronged to get their money back. The agency in 2021 has opened 204 criminal cases, with 150 requests to assist within the department, and has closed 133 cases.”
They stay busy. And it makes sense to have a division of law enforcement dedicated to agriculture. It is, after all, the biggest part of Arkansas’ economy. Agriculture has a $21 billion economic impact in this state every year.
The biggest crop in Arkansas is rice. The Farm Bureau reports Arkansas farmers plant an average of 1.3 million acres of rice and harvest more than 200 million bushels on 2,752 farms each year.
Soybeans are another huge crop for farmers in the Natural State. It’s grown in 41 counties on about 3.3 million acres, according to the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Research and Extension. That generates $1.7 billion annually for farmers in this state.
On the livestock end, Arkansas ranks 12th nationally in beef cows, according to the Farm Bureau. The state has more than 28,000 farms producing cattle, more than 1.7 million head. For chickens, Arkansas is second in the nation in broiler production. Pigs? The state has more than 1.8 million head. And around 11,000 acres are devoted to producing catfish.
Combine all of that with the Farm Bureau’s estimation of 18,778,660 acres of forest land, and you can see why Arkansas needs agriculture police.
While regular law enforcement agencies work hard to protect other sectors from fraud to traffic, agriculture police bring a special knowledge and focus other departments may not have.
“We know how to read a timber sheet or how to read a sale barn ticket, whereas this is not something [local law enforcement investigators] are accustomed to,” Mr. Black said.
During the most recent fiscal year, the department got $609,000 in restitution for victims. And that’s with Chief Black and a handful of law enforcement agents. Just imagine what the group could do with even more resources.
Arkansas’ agriculture police have more than proven their need and worth to taxpayers, but the sad truth is too few people know they exist.
“We’re picking up more and more livestock cases every day because without [exposure], they don’t know we’re here,” Chief Black said. “If I got a dollar for every time someone said, ‘I didn’t know y’all existed,’ I would double my salary in a year. They’ve known us as a forestry [unit] forever.”
Farmers all across Arkansas should know there’s a dedicated law enforcement agency available to help them with specific crimes committed against their property. And hopefully after this week, more will know.