| On Topic
Agricultural Crime - On Track for recovery
The cost of rural crime in the UK has been estimated at a staggering £ 39m and many farmers who feel under siege from thieves are now turning their farmyards into fortresses just to protect their homes , families , properties and livelihoods .
T he impact of crime on rural communities has been devastating to the extent that some farmers are now giving up the profession all together because of continuous thievery . Most stolen items appear to be tools followed by Quad vehicles . Livestock theft including sheep rustling cost the country £ 2.2m and Agricultural vehicle theft at £ 5.4m whilst down on 2015 was boosted by the huge theft of Land Rover Defenders which had risen by almost 17 % from £ 1.8m to £ 2.1m between 2015 and 2016 .
Cost of UK rural crime in 2016 was recorded as England £ 33.8m , Northern Ireland £ 2.5m , Scotland £ 1.6m and Wales £ 1.3m with Lincolnshire being the worst-hit English county with a loss of £ 2.5m .
In the last 5 years the total loss to the UK for Agricultural crime has been calculated at over £ 203 million pounds with the blame set mainly on blatant European thieves who now exploit our transport links and can move stolen items into mainland Europe in a matter of hours .
The news that theft and fraud figures from the private , commercial and leisure sectors of motorcycling appear to be all heading north at a great rate of knots was undeniably a shock to the government officials and senior police officers attending the UK ' s National Vehicle Crime Conference held in Loughborough recently .
Much concern was shown regarding the
12 | Farming Monthly | September 2017
dramatic changes in the current crime epidemic not helped of course by the continued depletion of police resources . Indeed the prediction of at least a 10 % to 20 % increase in the theft of machinery on last year and that more motorcycles trikes and quads are now stolen than sold created an agreement for a complete rethink on how the police deal with this type of theft altogether .
It was good to hear however that some battles against the thief are being won particularly in technology where the invisible DNA marking systems for instance have shown they are a positive aid to the recovery of machines and their parts .
The success of stolen property being recovered using these systems has not only been hailed by the police as a welcome aid in the recovery of property but they now appear to act as a deterrent to theft in their own right .
Suggested successful marking kits Datatag & Selectamark
It is the tracking device however that appears to have broken through as today ’ s ‘ most wanted ’ piece of technology desired by paranoid owners who simply wants their tractor or quad returned quickly after theft . With tracking companies offering a 90 % recovery rate and promising that speedy return these clearly appear to be the crime prevention devices to have .
The tracking device has been around for some time and whilst there are quite a few ‘ cheap ’ self-monitored systems available from the internet that may help you trace your property if it ’ s been dumped somewhere locally , it ’ s still likely that actually recovering it could be rather difficult .
Most of the today ’ s subscription-based 24 / 7 tracking companies immediately notifies their base the moment a piece of machinery is moved without the keys in the ignition . It ’ s then they will contact the owner , check that it ’ s not still in their possession ( for instance , if they forgot to deactivate it ), then immediately begin tracking it .
The companies support staff , many of who are former police officers are then deployed to assist local police in seizing the machine or gaining access to where the tracker indicates it to be . That appears to be the requirement nowadays as there are no rights to enter private property without police help and dependent on the circumstances a warrant may be necessary .
The technology behind these devices often referred to as ‘ GPS trackers ’ is varied and today there are several types each offering their own advantage .
The majority of subscription-based tracking systems currently on the market today use cellular communication to talk to a server when the craft goes into an alert state ( for instance , if shaken ). Others check in only at various programmable times of the day , at which point the device then updates its location .
Many suspicious thieves already shake an item to see if it has an alarm fitted and it ’ s becoming more common for them to do the
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