Farmwatch

Last Friday I popped down to the Mart to meet the team behind Farmwatch. They are doing a great job in difficult circumstances and tight budgets. We had a good chat for nearly an hour and I learnt about the work they are doing, and objectives for the way ahead. It seems to me that certain things are crucial: we definitely need farmers to be more vigilant and defensive of their property, and to remember to report in both losses asap so that police can action the crime, and also sightings of unusual events or people in rural areas. We need to ensure that the tight police budgets are split fairly and equably between urban crime budgets and rural crime budgets. And we need to increase existing networks of information to be shared with the police. Oil buying groups should be sharing their email lists with the police and providing farmwatch updates as it quite clear that theft of oil, diesel and petrol is on the rise and a real problem in rural areas. The hunts are already very good at this. Oil buying groups should be chatting to their local police officers and see how they can work together to stop rural crime.