Blight in Italy leaves pine nut nuts pining for more

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/02/italian-pine-nut-shortage-leads-to-thefts

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It isn’t cocaine or heroin, but a black market for pine nuts has got Italian carabinieri on alert.

Some supermarkets selling the little nuts, a key ingredient in pesto, are even adding anti-theft devices to their stashes, after the crop of the already pricey nut was hit by disease and bad weather.

It was clear that sellers had a problem on their hands last December in Vado Ligure, near Genova, the home of pesto.

According to a report in La Stampa, eight thieves raided a factory owned by Noberasco, a top wholesaler, and drove away with 7 tonnes of the nuts, worth an estimated €400,000 (£300,000).

Two months earlier, an employee at the company was allegedly caught red-handed carrying 17kg of pine nuts out of the factory in a plastic bag.

Last week, a 23-year-old was arrested in Perugia in possession of €200 worth of stolen pine nuts.

His two alleged accomplices, who were suspected of being involved in an earlier nut stealing incident, evaded police, but investigators told the Ansa news agency that they believed the suspects were stealing the nuts for sale on the black market.

The soaring price of the nuts over the last few years is seen as the chief motivator behind the thefts.

Wholesale prices have climbed to €47 per kg owing to two elements affecting pines: poor weather and a parasite that has hit the trees in Italy and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

At the same time, world production of pine nuts has halved in one season to just 18m tonnes in 2012, from 34m a year earlier.

Big sellers of pine nuts are trying to get ahead of the thieves by keeping the timing and method of their deliveries to wholesalers under wraps, and making their shipments smaller to limit the damage of possible thefts.