Farmers are urged to secure gear as rural crime spikes around Moving Day, targeting vehicles and tools.
With Moving Day approaching for the dairy sector, farmers are being warned to take precautions now to protect themselves from an expected jump in rural crime.
Abby France from FMG Insurance says the company sees two distinct spikes in rural theft claims each year: the weeks either side of Moving Day on June 1, and during January.
“During those times, there’s a lot of equipment and stock constantly on the move at all hours of the day. People are shifting farm machinery, making bales, and there’s a lot of activity.
“That means a criminal driving around at night isn’t quite as suspicious as usual; you don’t pay as much attention to a strange car on your roads.
Speaking on the Federated Farmers Podcast, France said rural crime is undoubtedly on the rise.
“It’s definitely a problem out there for our farmers and growers. When we look at our rural crime numbers, the trend is heading upwards.
“Over the last five years, we’ve paid out around $48 million in theft claims, so it’s a large number.”
She says big-ticket items like tractors make up some of the claims, but the bulk of thefts are of smaller things that are easy to lift and resell.
“The most-commonly stolen items are lighter vehicles – your motorbikes, quads, side-by-sides and two-wheelers, and utes with the trailer on. They make up about 30% of what’s stolen.”
Farm equipment like tools, chainsaws, generators and fencing gear make up about another third of claims, and the remainder is domestic contents such as jewellery, electronics, TVs and firearms.
France says FMG is also seeing a rise in fuel theft, driven by the lift in fuel prices.
“Over the last five years, we’ve paid out $530,000 in fuel claims alone, and the number of claims has doubled since 2019.”
She says the best way for farmers to protect themselves is to deter criminals from getting access to the property in the first place.
“A lot of these thieves are opportunists, so don’t make it easy for them to take their opportunity – that’s the key point.
“Make your gear hard to access because a thief who can’t get past the gate isn’t getting away with your gear.
“I’ve heard farmers say over the years, ‘locks only keep an honest man out’ – but that is not true.
“They slow down even determined criminals, and that gives you more of a chance of catching them in the act and that makes them uncomfortable. They don’t want to be caught.
“If we make it hard or the risk of being caught goes up then they’re much more likely to move on and look for something else.”
She suggests putting locks on sheds, gates and fuel tanks, storing equipment away securely, and installing alarms, security lights and cameras.
“The other thing is marking and recording your equipment. Gear that’s engraved or distinctively marked is much less attractive to thieves, and an engraving tool only costs about $50.”
She also warns against posting photos on social media of your new tractor.
“If criminals know you’ve got shiny new things they’d like to get their hands on, they’re much more likely to target you.
“Also, be careful about sharing the fact that your whole team is expected to be off-farm, as thieves are often scanning online to look for targets and create their shopping lists.”
Federated Farmers’ latest Rural Crime Survey found 67% of 1000 farmer respondents had experienced a crime or suspected they had, in the instance of hard-to-prove incidents like livestock killing or theft.
But nearly half of those farmers had not reported it because they thought police were too busy or wouldn’t be interested.
“That’s incredibly frustrating,” says Richard McIntyre, Federated Farmers rural policing spokesperson.
“Farmers seem happy to tell us they’ve been a victim of crime, but they’re not telling the police because they don’t think there’s any point.
“We need farmers to report all crimes, and even suspicious vehicles and activity, because it helps the police to see patterns of offending, which increase the chances of an arrest.
“But, more importantly, if crimes go unreported it makes it harder for Federated Farmers to advocate successfully for more police resources to be allocated.
“We want better police resourcing for rural NZ and the best way farmers can help with that is to report every crime to police, so they can understand the scale of the problem.”
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