Meth heads stealing copper from farmers

California farmers are increasingly having to deal with people stealing copper wiring out of irrigation systems. The thefts, which gain the thief a few hundred dollars can cost the farmers thousands of dollars to replace. And if the theft is not noticed soon enough, the entire crop can be lost.
Police say that they believe that most of the thefts are committed by methamphetamine addicts. But if the price of copper keeps rising, I doubt it will just be methamphetamine addicts stealing it.
This isn't the first time I've written about copper salvage. A few months ago, I wrote about Vietnamese fisherman who were accidentally pulling up newer fiber optic cabling when trying to salvage old copper cables. I fully expect to see a lot more stories about stolen cables and wires in the near future.

Via New York Times: Unusual Culprits Cripple Farms in California

Vietnamese fishermen accidentally cut fiber optic cables

It seems that with the price of copper rising so high these days, Vietnam decided to allow fishermen to harvest old copper cabling from the ocean around the country. The copper cables are left over from the war, and are no longer used. So there really is no reason why they couldn't be harvested for their copper. The problem came in when the fishermen couldn't tell the difference between the old copper cable and newer fiber optic cable. 27 miles of fiber optic cable has been lost, which is going to cost the government of Vietnam about $5 million to replace. Meanwhile all communications in the country are running down a single fiber optic cable. Not a good thing when you are trying to increase the high tech industry in your country.

Via EnGadget: Vietnamese fishermen mistakenly swipe miles of fiber-optic wire