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Japan's Sweet Potato Thief Steals 15 Tonnes of Spuds in One Weekend

That’s twice the weight of an adult elephant.
Farmer, Sweet potato, japan, farm, produce, crops, thief, stolen, steal
For illustrative purposes only. Photo by droberson from Pixabay

A farmer walks into his warehouse and finds 15 tonnes of sweet potatoes missing. That’s it, no punchline. It actually happened.

On the morning of Monday, November 18, a farmer in Oarai in Japan’s Ibaraki prefecture discovered that sometime over the weekend, a thief (or thieves) made off with 15 tonnes of his delicious, bright purple Beni Azuma sweet potatoes. Fifteen tonnes.

That can be hard to quantify, it’s not like your local baking supply store has a 15,000 kilogram measuring cup. So, to put that in perspective, 15 tonnes is about twice the weight of a tyrannosaurus rex or an adult African elephant, that’s about a fifth of the weight of the space shuttle Endeavour. Someone stole that much sweet potatoes. Over a weekend. What did you do this weekend?

The crops, a speciality of the eastern Japanese region, were housed in 1,000 individual containers, each able to hold 20 kilograms. The farmer had stored the sweet potatoes in a warehouse next to his sweet potato field but decided to leave it unlocked, trusting that his neighbours would have no ill intentions, Ibaraki News reported.

He last saw his hard-earned produce on Saturday but by Monday, 750 containers had been stolen. His estimated loss was valued at more than 1.87 million yen (US$17,300).

Unbeknownst to the farmer, a similar incident of sweet potato theft took place in their region a month before. That time, a thief made off with 2.7 tonnes of sweet potatoes. A suspect has not been identified but investigators are considering the possibility that both cases of 'Grand Theft Pot-Auto" were committed by the same person.

The thief’s motives are still unknown but sweet potatoes can be kept for a long time without getting spoilt. They’re usually sold in autumn, when the weather is cooler and traditional Japanese street vendors sell them out of carts. Japan has a huge obsession with the crop and it’s widely considered a staple in the Japanese diet. There, they have sweet potato Kit Kat, ice cream, and even alcoholic beverages like Shochu.