Agriculture is vulnerable to crimes everyday. The Tennessee Agriculture Crime Unit works to protect the industry from these crimes. Tennessee Ag Crime Unit, Special Agent Greg Whitehead, explains how they protect agriculture, and why it's so important.

Thomas Capps
Agriculture's protection against crime. Hello and welcome to Tennessee Home and Farm Radio, I'm Thomas Capps.

Greg Whitehead
I believe our job is very important because like I said their industry of agriculture. It's very important one of the number one industries in the state of Tennessee.

Thomas Capps
It's not something that a lot of people think about but ag related crimes happen every day. In fact, just this month alone, there have been 95 crime cases related to agriculture in Tennessee, including things like theft, livestock related and wildfires. That's where the Tennessee Ag Crime Unit comes in where agents like Greg Whitehead work every day to help protect our state's most important industry.

Greg Whitehead
It is preyed on by criminals because of the the millions of dollars involved in this industry. And there's 1000s and 1000s upon dollars there it can it happened in livestock thefts and with the price of livestock going up now and the cost of everything going up and livestock is also very expensive now and we can see as livestock prices rise. We do see more theft going on and people still in livestock there are units dedicated on tracking these things down.

Thomas Capps
Agriculture has an $89 billion economic impact in Tennessee, which explains why it's such a large target for crime. The Tennessee Ag crime unit has presence in all 95 counties in Tennessee and worked with neighboring states as needed. While theft and livestock related cases make up a large chunk of their response.

Greg Whitehead
Whitehead says their biggest calls are for and spring and fall we have a we have a lot of wildfires. So we investigate all the wildfires in the state of Tennessee and we have we're very busy during that time of year we have also a lot of the animal calls. So we'll go out on from theft from abuse to a lot of sister running a large.

Thomas Capps
Working hard to protect a billion dollar industry that every Tennessean relies on daily.

Greg Whitehead
I'm glad and proud of our unit all they do to protect protect this state Tennessee

Thomas Capps
For Tennessee Home and Farm Radio. I'm Thomas Capps. Thanks for listening and have a great day!