Organized crime gangs equipped with automatic weapons and tractor trailers are branching out into raids on huge grain silos, in a sign of growing lawlessness in parts of Mexico’s north.
Attacks on warehouses and cargo trucks have multiplied into a near-weekly affair in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, where one of the worst cold snaps in decades wiped out corn and vegetable plots last month, pushing up prices of the remaining harvest and making it more attractive to thieves.
The unusual crime wave in major agricultural-exporting states is a new headache for the Mexican government struggling to maintain the country’s image as a top emerging market.
Read Also
Alberta Beef Producers announces withdrawal from Canadian Cattle Association
Alberta Beef Producers announced its withdrawal from the Canadian Cattle Association, effective July 1, 2026.
Mexico’s national warehousing association AAGEDE said the spike in thefts began a year or two ago, but its members are only recently coming forward and many are still too scared to report details on the number or scale of the incidents.
Jose Jimenez, director of Mexican storage company ALMER, told of one robbery last year in a tiny town in the central state of Zacatecas where an armed commando emptied a warehouse of 900 tonnes of beans, worth around $750,000, loading up 30 trucks over the course of an entire day.
The gang left five tonnes of beans with local townspeople to keep them quiet and the police did not show up until two days later, he said.
Many warehousers are boosting spending on security, adding fortress-like protections to their installations, AAGEDE’s director Raul Millan said.
“We are building war-like trenches around our warehouses… and guard houses, like a medieval castle,” Jimenez said. The company had to increase security spending by up to five per cent, he said.
Authorities have made little progress in identifying the culprits of the large-scale robberies. Some producers speculate drug gangs may be using money earned from the sale of stolen grains to bankroll criminal activities.
Robbers can easily sell truckloads of seed and corn to intermediaries and big-city markets as buyers ask few questions about where the goods came from.
“They come in groups of 20 or 30 masked men with their own trailers,” Jesus Palomir of Sinaloa’s agricultural producers association CAADES, said. “It’s very well organized.”
In March gunmen locked a warehouse owner in a room and carted off vehicles full of corn in the Sinaloan town of Los Mochis, local police said. Media reports said the thieves made off with 250 tonnes of grain.
State police have documented five similar cases so far this year but say many more are probably never reported.
“Gangs are robbing bags of seed from producers in warehouses and in the fields,” said Adalberto Mustieles, head of farm services in Sinaloa’s state government. “They beat up the farmers and steal their trucks.”
———
“Wearebuilding
war-liketrenchesaroundourwarehouses…andguardhouses,likeamedievalcastle.”
JOSE JIMENEZ
