Arable Farmer Focus: Robert Law tightens farm security after tractor theft
Following the theft of a three-week-old Fendt 820 earlier this year, we have completed all security measures requested by the insurers to obtain settlement of our claim.
All tractors, forklifts and the combine have immobilisers and trackers. The farmyards have CCTV systems and the roads leading into the yards have controlled security gates.
The cost of all these measures was at the thick end of £20,000. We have just had our annual renewal and have decided to stick with our existing insurers, which only marginally raised the premiums. The whole saga has been time-consuming as well as stressful.
However, we feel that we have now carried out the measures that we were inevitably going to have to do in the near future. Hopefully, we will now be able to go to the insurance market every year in a stronger position.
I would strongly advise others to review their security on their farms. I still go into farmyards in the locality where there are no gates, workshops with doors open, tractors worth £100,000 left unattended with ignition keys still in place. The machinery manufacturers are slowly responding by fitting security measures to their machines before they go out on to farms, but farmers have a duty of care just as much as anybody else.
Thieves and gangs have moved on from stealing Porsches and Ferraris to farm machinery, which they now see as easier to steal and dispose of. So far this year, more than 40 tractors have been stolen in Lincolnshire alone and nationally farm thefts rose 30% from 2008 to 2009. Since the loss of our Fendt 820, I have heard of two more being stolen from farms. These, however, turned up in Lithuania four days later.
