Security Worries for the Agricultural Industry

Agricultural theft is on the rise according to the NFU Mutual rural crime survey.

In England agricultural theft cost farmers £42.8m during 2010. This represents a 26% enhance on the previous year.

Scotland saw thefts totaling £1.4m an increase of 57% over the same period, and in Northern Ireland theft had risen by 28% to £3.8m. Theft in Wales had been recorded at £1.7m a reduction of 48% over the previous year.

These figures do not include the cost of lost revenue, replacing stolen equipment, or increased insurance premiums. Often insurance companies will only offer the current market value of stolen products including depreciation leaving owners in the tough circumstance of having to make up for the shortfall to replace the machinery. Also check for Agricultural Commodity Risk Management and Pest Management Solutions

The survey found that most theft occurred from outbuildings at night time and early hours of the morning. In fact the most common time reported for theft had been between midnight and 6am, although tractor theft had been often reported during broad daylight hours.

The countryside is proving to be a challenging area for crime prevention agencies to police effectively and the high value of agricultural equipment together with the lack of built in security devices makes them a prime target for thieves.

Theft of tractors is on the increase in part because over the years the car industry has upped its game, with manufacturers routinely equipping vehicles with alarms, immobilisers, high tech crucial fobs with rolling codes, and even tracking devices.

This makes them a much less attractive target for thieves who have moved on to agricultural vehicles which have typical security levels as seen thirty years ago in the car industry.

The One key fits all policy of agricultural manufacturers for their brand names has been adding fuel to the fire, with huge tractors being worth more than top of the range cars and often left unattended, this is something which the industry will have to address.

In many cases a single reported theft can involve many machines at the same time. In a recent case Farmer Nigel Hicks of Wallingford got three Massey Ferguson tractors stolen in just one night, along with a loader and a bailer.

It is not always achievable to lock valuable products away when carrying out work away from your premises for a period of time. Earlier this full year a Farmer in Wormingford reported the theft of two John Deere tractors, two dumper trailers, and a barrel of reddish diesel to the police. The machinery was taken while they were parked up for few days while digging a lake.

In the survey 71% of NFU branches mentioned they believed rural crime was planned and carried out in an organised fashion, this was most often by thieves from outside of the area and the increasing trend is for this machinery to end up being stolen from fields and outbuildings, and transported to warehouses, often to end up being stripped down for parts and shipped overseas.

In one latest case reported in the news, a tractor which was stolen from a farm in the Cotswolds turned up 2000 miles away in Cyprus.

Thieves will often park up stolen tractors in remote locations incase they have a hidden tracker installed. If after a period of time they have not been recovered by police they can assume there is no tracker fitted and shift them on. This means that machinery fitted with tracking devices benefit from a high rate of recovery without loss or damage.

Having a good tracking device fitted can also overcome the theft of agricultural machinery if it is capable of actively alerting on any attempt to move the products, thus enabling the crime to end up being prevented before it happens.

There are a wide selection of tracking devices for machinery and assets online.