Every year or two, Terra Firma Farm is the victim of a crime. It’s always theft of something or things. We’ve had thousands of dollars worth of equipment stolen from our repair shop, on several different occcasions. Our office has been broken into three times, with the thieves taking our computers and one time even our safe (which had no cash in it). We’ve had trucks stolen from the parking lot, and one time someone even stole a trailer in plain view of one of our employees who was on his lunch break– he called me and we were able to retrieve it fairly quickly with the help of the police. (The thief claimed he thought it belonged to a friend of his so they let him go).
Like most law-abiding people, I get angry about these crimes. They make me want to do something to stop them, to make the farm more secure. To try to keep “bad people” out.
Terra Firma farms about 225 acres of land, several different parcels spread over about 10 miles spanning two counties. A “section” of land, a square mile, is 640 acres. So we manage about a third of a square mile of land. Almost all of our fields are accessible to anyone who feels like accessing them, although they are technically trespassing if they do. We have almost no fences around the properties we farm, although we do have some natural obstacles along the perimeter of some of them that make access difficult — ditches, arroyos, creeks, or canals.
Fences are expensive to build and mantain. In our area, a fenced property is an indication of a very wealthy property owner, whether an individual or an entity such as the University of California — which has a research ranch across the road from my house surrrounded by a tall barb-wire fence. Gates to let people in and out are even more costly than fences, requiring either a physical lock , or an automated entry system that so many people would have access to — employees, service providers and others — that it would compromise the security anyway. To truly guarantee that only approved personnel came onto the property, we would have to have employee badges, video cams and security guards to monitor everything.
Even if someone offered to fence all the perimeters of our farmland — a mile and quarter of fencing — for free, I would think twice about accepting the offer. The lack of security measures for accessing our lands makes it easy and convenient for our employees to get to the spots on the farm where they are working each day. It also makes it easy and convenient for us to move equipment and produce freely between our fields and our washing and packing facilities.
But assuming that doesn’t happen, it is very clear to me that attempting to make our farm completely “secure” would cost many times more than the money we would save in losses. And people who want to commit crimes would still likely find a way to do so. Farms in general are sparsely occupied, and in the middle of night it’s easy enough to cut through a fence or a gate.
In my opinion, our farm is a metaphor for the issue of border security and immigration. Our nation has enormous land borders and even longer coastlines. The cost of attempting to keep out “bad people” is not justified, even if it were possible to do so. And the freedom we enjoy as U.S. citizens cannot survive the kind of survellance and enforcement system that would be required to guarantee 100% safety — to say nothing of the contribution that millions of immigrants make to our country. We need a pragmatic, 21st century approach to regulate immigration. Instead we are getting an approach that manipulates people’s fear and other emotions, while impingeing on everyone’s freedom.
Thanks,