Thieves find rich harvest in the fields

The insurer NFU Mutual says five tractors have been stolen from around Doncaster so far this year and thieves have taken five 4x4 vehicles in the Sheffield area during the same period. A medium-sized tractor used in arable areas of Yorkshire costs between 50,000 and 100,000.

Tim Price a spokesman for insurers NFU Mutual believes that in the past communication between forces has been a problem.

His company has helped to fund the Plant and Agricultural National Intelligence Unit, designed to co-ordinate action against the theft of plant and vehicles, not only in the UK but sharing information about stolen tractors internationally as well.

"We've already had a couple of examples where tractors have been spotted as far afield as Poland and bought back to the UK," says Tim Price. His company is also keen to see tractors fitted with the type of tracking devices which come as standard on many high performance cars.

He says rural crime goes in cycles, depending on the state of the economy. Recently, rural communities have seen a big increase in machinery theft. Three years ago it was scrap iron, when prices were high. The following year thieves were targeting diesel fuel. Now it's vehicles, often with an eye for illicit export.

One farmer in South Yorkshire whose land borders three police forces says it is easy to see why tractors have become such a tempting target. "Modern cars are very much more difficult to steal, but modern tractors are pretty easy, and somebody has realised that modern tractors are worth more than high performance cars," says the farmer who asked not to be identified for fear of being targeted.

"We've been aware for a long time that stolen farm machinery went to southern Ireland. Now it's going to places like Turkey and to Poland as well. They did for a long time have a preference for John Deeres, the green machines. At the moment they've been stealing more or less anything they can get their hands on."

There are concerns that some farms in areas like Epworth, which lies between Doncaster and Scunthorpe, are at risk because they lie so close to police force boundaries.

A spokeswoman for South Yorkshire police said the area around Epworth is unusual because it is in South Yorkshire but close to the border of three other police forces, Humberside, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire.

"The Regional Roads Policing Team, part of the Regional Programme Team, was one of the first units to be established in autumn 2008 and it seized over a million pounds worth of assets in the first quarter of its existence.

"They run regular road crime operations across our borders to catch criminals who may live in one area but commit crime in another. Many road crime operations have taken place."

"Because of the road links and the M62, we suffer with a lot of cross-border crime," says Laura Simpson, a police community support officer with North Yorkshire police, based at Eggborough, near Selby.

She specialises in dealing with rural crime and acknowledges that there does exist a suspicion that police forces don't talk to each other sufficiently and that criminals won't be chased back across their borders.

"I think it's a theory that if they steal in North Yorkshire and take it back to West Yorkshire there's less chance of them being caught," she said.

"But that isn't the case. We won't stop at the borders. North Yorkshire won't tolerate it and we will chase them back to where they came from. If the job is current, if we get a call saying thieves are heading towards the M62, straight away the control room will put neighbouring forces on alert.

"Our officers will go out and pursue it to wherever they need to go."

She does say however that sometimes geographical knowledge across force boundaries can be a problem and she says it's important for farmers who live close to those boundaries to make sure that if they dial 999 they are put through to the correct force control.

"They must state that they are in North Yorkshire, and it's North Yorkshire Police they need to speak to."

Both North Yorkshire and South Yorkshire police have just run high profile operations against rural crime, in particular targeting poachers.

Laura Simpson says: "They will cause criminal damage to gates and fences to get on land and a lot of the people who commit these offences will be the same people who are eyeing up outbuildings and plant equipment. So it's all one big link really."