The EconomistJuly 27th 2019 Britain 232 inner-city offending is so intractable.
Consider sheep. Welsh farmers typical-
ly graze their flocks on a hillside for a sea-
son, so they may not know when a doz-
en—or a hundred—go missing. By the time
the police are alerted, little evidence re-
mains. Things are worse in lambing season
when criminals can double or triple their
takings. Nor is it always obvious when a
crime is being committed. A passer-by who
sees someone herding a flock into a trailer
would assume it was a legitimate farmer.
Sheep are also attacked by dogs, says Rob
Taylor, who runs the North Wales team
from a decommissioned police air base
near Rhuddlan. The laws to prevent that are
lax and gathering evidence is hard. The vic-
tims, as Mr Taylor points out, cannot pro-
vide testimony.
For farmers, this is equivalent to some-body else having a factory or office burgled
or vandalised. “If somebody steals £60,000
($75,000) of jewels all hell would break
loose,” says Julia Mulligan, chair of the Na-
tional Rural Crime Network (nrcn), an as-
sociation of police commissioners and
other interested parties. “But if somebody
steals £60,000 worth of sheep that have
been bred over generations, people some-
how think it is funny.”
An investigation in 2017 by Farmers
Weekly, a trade publication, found that
0.75% of sheep-rustling incidents ended in
a conviction. According to nfuMutual,
Britain’s biggest farming insurer, the cost
of livestock theft was £2.4m in 2017. It esti-
mates the cost of all rural crime at £44.5m,
up 13.4% from the previous year. (Overall
theft in England and Wales declined for
several years to the end of 2017, though it
rose again in 2018.)
Not all thefts are of livestock. Tractors
and other expensive machines are com-
mon targets; police officers say they are of-
ten shipped and sold abroad or stripped for
parts. Quad bikes, which farmers use to get
around their estates, are easy to nick. Fuel
theft from farms is another problem. Rural
crime teams also tackle fly-tipping, unli-
censed raves, illegal off-roading, poaching
and other types of animal abuse.
One reason police forces have been set-
ting up dedicated teams is that rural crime
requires special training and equipment.
You cannot just go from one farm to anoth-
er in the same boots, says Mr Mason, be-
cause of the danger that you might spread
disease. High-visibility uniforms can
spook animals. Officers need thermal-im-
aging cameras for night-time patrols, and
vehicles that can go off-road. Thinly popu-
lated rural areas are hard to patrol. North
Wales Police has just acquired three drones
to add to the two it operates. Gwent Police
is training all its rural crime officers as
drone pilots.
The other reason is that the police re-
cognised they were losing the trust of rural
people. Along with banks and shops, police
stations have vanished from more remote
areas over the past decade. People were un-
willing to report crimes even when they
knew who had committed them, says Mr
Mason, likening the situation to inner-city
estates where nobody wants to be a grass.
The artificially low tally of crimes in turn
meant that fewer resources were dedicated
to rural areas, says Ms Mulligan. A rural
crime survey by the nrcnfound that last
year a third of country folk who suffered a
crime did not bother to report it.
Dedicated teams have helped rebuild
some of that trust, as have smaller things
like publishing officers’ mobile phone
numbers on the web. But cracking down on
crime will always be difficult. What Ameri-
can cops call “the thin blue line” is, in rural
Britain, often very thin indeed. 7T
he royal welsh showtempts its
250,000 visitors with competition,
spectacle and wackiness. There are lum-
berjack contests, plastic cows to “milk”
and lots of farm machines to ogle. Roam-
ing the fields are the Prince of Wales, a
bunch of Zulu warriors and the regi-
mental goat of the Royal Welsh Guards.
It is the show’s centenary, but there is
little else to celebrate. Agricultural pro-
ductivity growth in Britain has lagged
behind that of America, France and
Germany since the 1960s. Veganism is
fashionable. Now Brexit threatens to
up-end subsidies; if Britain leaves the
European Union without a deal, export-
ers could be hit by steep tariffs on pro-
ducts like lamb. “We’re in a bit of a pick-
le,” says Dennis Ashton, a farmer in
tweed jacket and flat cap. “If I was young
again, I wouldn’t start.”
Yet plenty are. The show has a sep-
arate “young people’s village”, with djs
and 4,000 campers. One caravan is chris-
tened a “passion wagon”. “There was
some passion there earlier,” smirks a
neighbour. Four in ten English farmers
have a nominated successor within the
family, a slight increase on recent years.
Since 2013 the number of agriculture
students in Britain has risen in line with
overall higher-education trends.
Many are the children of farmers.
About four in five students at Coleg
Cambria Llysfasi, an agricultural college,
have farming backgrounds. “It’s in the
blood,” says Llyr Jones, 18, who began
helping on the family farm when he was
seven. “I’ve always been tractor mad.” But
some lack that excuse. Molly Hodge, an
18-year-old, got her first job on a farm last
month. Her mother manages a casino;
her father works in construction. Her
motivation is the same as that of farmers
for generations: to work outdoors.
Oddly, Brexit has enhanced the appeal
for some. Even those who voted for it (as
most farmers did) think it will unleash at
least a decade of agricultural upheaval.“You’ve got to be ballsy about it,” says
Andrew Fisher, 23, on his annual holiday
from the farm. Dafydd Jones, the 29-year-
old chairman of the Welsh young farm-
ers’ association, casts it as nothing less
than a battle for the Welsh soul. “Every-
one loves a challenge,” he says. “We can
farm like we’ve never farmed before.”
More prosaically, the domestic farm
lobby could become far more powerful
after Brexit.
As farming begins to make better use
of data and drones, it is becoming a little
more appealing to those who are reluc-
tant to get up at five in the morning to
milk the cows. Automation will allow
farmers to work more sociable hours,
says Dewi Jones of Coleg Cambria. “Tra-
ditionally it was a lot of menial work,” he
says. “It’s up to us to make it attractive,
otherwise it sounds a little bit like you’re
the kid who’s been sent up a chimney.”Pastures old
AgricultureBUILTH WELLS
Farming is tougher than ever. Young Britons are forming an orderly queueBetter than a guinea pig