Friday, October 10, 2008

Saguaro Farm

According to an article on CNN, "Feds to use computer chips to foil cactus thieves", you could be earning about $1000 per Saguaro cactus. If only your parents or grandparents had had the forethought to start a farm on your behalf.

"They're majestic giants that can grow to heights of 50 feet, sprout gaggles of arms and weigh several tons. They can take 50 years to flower and 70 years before sprouting an arm."

"Plant pilferers typically target the relatively young and small specimens in the 4- to 7-foot range -- which are probably 30 to 50 years old. Plants of that size typically fit in the bed of a pickup truck and can be covered with a tarp; bigger ones require heavy equipment to lift and larger vehicles to haul them. They typically can fetch $1,000 or more."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't the thieves know that the cactus would be marked, and just run a metal detector over them to find the tag and remove them? An inch wouldn't stop me.

Lynellen said...

Well, even if you don't know whether a particular one has a chip, wouldn't you just check it before you dug it out of the ground?