Farmers warn the rising value of farm equipment combined with policing shortages has created ‘the perfect storm’ for rural crime, with some in remote areas feeling abandoned to lawlessness.
They say their isolated homes offer rich pickings for thieves who travel from cities to target quad bikes, 4×4 vehicles, and expensive farm machinery alongside portable and easy to steal electronic items like tractor GPS systems.
Working to order and sometimes using drones to scope out their targets, the organised gangs smash their way into buildings and sneak around fields in the dark, making off with everything from electric fences and harvesting equipment to trucks and trailers.
Farmers also live in fear of poachers rustling droves of sheep, which are either slaughtered in the field or taken away to black market abattoirs, along with hare coursers attending illegal meets armed with knives.
Increases in sheep theft take place not only around Christmas, but also during Islamic festivals when the demand for halal-compliant meat is at its peak – livestock farmers said.
Of the farmers who spoke to at a packed Louth Livestock Market in Lincolnshire, nearly all had a story to tell about rural crime.
Michael Read, 79, said: ‘We have been done twice and each time for about six or seven hundred pounds. Two or three years ago they took all our grinders and everything.
‘But we are lucky in that we have firewall security and are close to our local village. For farmers in more remote areas it is a nightmare.
‘My own neighbours were burgled only two or three weeks ago. It is extraordinary the cheek these thieves have got.
‘One of the neighbours even had a mobile feeding pen stolen.
‘It cost thousands of pounds and we don’t know how they even got something of that size out of the field. It was quite something to behold.
‘Farmers are just very, very vulnerable. Tractors are better protected than they were but everything else on a farm with an engine should be better protected too.’
He underlined that, despite their brazenness, rural gangs were often sophisticated, adding: ‘When they took the boxes of our farm equipment, we later found the empty boxes.
‘So we put bricks inside them and put them back in the field. Later we found they had been opened again but they had looked inside and not taken anything.’
One common countryside crime is hare coursing, which involves criminals releasing their dogs on a wild hare – usually after betting which one will catch and kill the animal first.
With bets reported to reach as much as £10,000, meet-ups are frequently arranged by organised criminals, who may carry weapons in case they encounter any resistance.
In November, officers from Lincolnshire Police recovered a knife, a saw and a pickaxe handle inside an abandoned car that had been used by hare coursers.
Illegal hunting is another unwelcome feature of rural life, with some criminals using a technique known as ‘lamping’ – whereby high-powered lights are used to disorientate animals before killing them.
Richard Bostock and Daniel Simpson were found with a dead fallow deer in the back of their van after being stopped by police earlier this year.
The pair, whose hands were covered in blood ‘like something from a thriller movie’ had been using lamping to startle deer in woods near to Grantham in Lincolnshire before killing them using a lurcher-style dog.
During his police interview, Bostock said: ‘We didn’t do owt to anyone, any property or owt like that, weren’t out thieving or owt like that we were just out for the craic I suppose, you know.’
They were arrested for offences under the Hunting Act, handed criminal behaviour orders and ordered to pay just over £200 each in fines and legal costs.
Kent Police arrested 10 people during a ‘week of action’ against rural crime in October. More than a dozen vehicles were seized, including a Ford Fiesta filled with catapults, knives, lamps and the remains of a dead pigeon and a pheasant.
Insurance company NFU Mutual estimates that the cost of rural crime increased by 4.3 per cent year-on-year in 2023, to £52.8million.
It found Essex was the worst affected region, followed by Lincolnshire, Shropshire, Cambridgeshire and Kent.
NFU Mutual chairman Jim McLaren said rural crime was becoming ‘increasingly organised and ever more sophisticated’, with examples of criminal gangs using technology such as drones to identify and scope out targets.
Hannah Binns, a rural affairs specialist, said ‘continuing high inflation’ that was pushing up the cost of farm equipment and the existence of ‘ready resale markets’ in the UK and overseas was partly to blame for the rise in theft.
She revealed 86 per cent of NFU Mutual insurance agents believed rural crime was negatively affecting farmers’ mental wellbeing, and called for ‘coordinated efforts from insurers, farmers, manufacturers, police and politicians’.
Neil Hobson, 41, blamed a lack of rural police for the problem, telling : ‘It is a perfect storm. You have a lot of darkness and a lot of valuable equipment.
‘You cannot find a copper in town so you are not going to get one out where I live. These gangs are organised and stealing stuff to order.
‘They have a customer lined up for everything they pinch. They also know they are not going to get caught or face any repercussions.’
He claimed there was a rise in sheep theft during Islamic festivals, which were linked to a rise in demand for halal meat.
And he linked the rise in organised thefts to the increasing sophistication of many items of farming equipment. Top of every rural villain’s shopping list is the self-steering GPS kits fitted to tractors, allowing them to be driven remotely around fields.
He added: ‘The cost of a tractor now is £250,000 and any thing that goes with it can set you back 30 grand – and you don’t even have to smash a window to get it.’
Another worry to victims is the fear of being prosecuted if they do tackle intruders.
‘You cannot take action in the interests of your own land – you catch someone in your back yard and you can’t give them a slap,’ Mr Hobson said.
Like many locals, he was outraged by the recent case of farmer Neil Greenwood, who was arrested for false imprisonment and assault by Lancashire Police after reportedly tying up two men and taking them to a police station on a quad bike on October 20.
Mr Hobson raged : ‘They should be giving that guy a knighthood not prosecuting him. But that is the climate we are in now and this Government is not interested so I cannot see it getting any better.’
Many farmers agreed it was not worth standing up to the raiders – but at the same time they felt vulnerable because farmers need to be out and about at all times of the day and evening.
Because of their punishing work schedules, farmers were potentially at risk every hour of the day, explained friends Ian McNee, 65, and Martin Cooper, 64.
Mr Cooper added: ‘A lot of it involves knives and things like that now. It is frightening.’
So brazen are the thieves that Mr McNee said there had been a spate of 4×4 thefts a few years ago when the thugs simply banged on the doors of the houses and demanded the keys on the threat of violence.
Mr McNee added: ‘They come out of cities in their vans and target certain areas. They come onto your farm and even right into your back yard.
‘You put up CCTV and you just do what you can with alarms on your work benches. But it goes waves and when it comes around to your area it can be absolutely brazen.’
Fellow farmer John Laight said: ‘I would not say crime around here goes up at Christmas. In my experience it is an all-year-round problem.
‘It is certainly organised. They are stealing to order. Things like power tools you can sell to anyone but a lot of this is highly specialised equipment that would not be of any use to the general public.
‘A lot of it is big stuff as well – stuff that they need a lorry to take away.’
On November 18, police found the remains of five sheep that had been butchered by thieves in a field near Boston in Lincolnshire.
The remains of the sheep, who had recently been treated so could have been dangerous to eat, were dumped inside black plastic bags.
Eamonn Sleaford, 70, says increasingly farmers are having to live under the radar to avoid the attention of rural gangs.
He said: ‘The thing is a lot of them are stealing this stuff because they have a drug habit. We have gates on all our roads and signs saying there is no way out so they know what they are getting into if they do try and come onto the land.
‘I have even known them to steal electric fences. Farmers are using Facebook to share information about thefts with Facebook friends who are other farmers.
‘But what we need is more police with local knowledge. The nearest police station to me is 15 miles away.
‘In the old days, we had a local bobby who knew everyone on his beat. Now the police come from outside the area and likely as not are not local.’
Martin Clough, 54, said: ‘We have CCTV even out in the Fens. But it is only as good as the Wi-Fi signal. A lot of these gangs come onto farms thinking there is no one about. But a lot of the time we are out dealing with the cows and doing other jobs.
‘A lot of farmers just don’t know whether they are going to get stabbed.’