Footprint Business Consulting

Agricultural theft is on the rise according to the NFU Mutual rural crime survey.

In England agricultural theft cost farmers £42.8m during 2010. This represents a 26% increase on the previous year.

Scotland saw thefts totaling £1.4m an increase of 57% over the same period, and in Northern Ireland theft had risen by 28% to £3.8m. Theft in Wales was recorded at £1.7m a reduction of 48% over the previous year.

These figures do not include the cost of lost revenue, replacing stolen equipment, or increased insurance premiums. Often insurance companies will only offer the current market value of stolen equipment including depreciation leaving owners in the tough situation of having to make up for the shortfall to replace the machinery.

The survey found that most theft occurred from outbuildings during the night and early hours of the morning. In fact the most common time reported for theft was between midnight and 6am, although tractor theft was often reported during broad daylight hours.

The countryside is proving to be a difficult area for crime prevention agencies to police effectively and the high value of agricultural equipment together with the lack of built in security devices makes them a prime target for thieves.

Theft of tractors is on the increase in part because over the years the car industry has upped its game, with manufacturers routinely equipping vehicles with alarms, immobilisers, high tech key fobs with rolling codes, and even tracking devices.

This makes them a much less attractive target for thieves who have moved on to agricultural vehicles which have typical security levels as seen thirty years ago in the car industry. Read more…

Sustainable agriculture can be a broad and sometimes vague term without a universally agreed-upon definition. I like to define sustainability in the broadest sense possible, in that sustainability is the ability to carry out practices indefinitely, without having to eventually halt them because of negative impacts on environment, community, or the processes themselves. Sustainable agriculture thus involves more than just environmentally sound farming practices, but also necessarily encompasses both economic considerations (questions of resource utilization) and human considerations as well.

Why is sustainability important in agriculture?

Unfortunately, the current agricultural production systems in place not only in the U.S. but in many parts of the world are highly unsustainable. Some of the problems with agriculture include the destruction of wild ecosystems, such as the clearing of rainforest and other biomes to make room for farming, nutrient pollution and chemical pollution from agricultural runoff, waterway disruption and aquifer depletion from the use of water for irrigation, and climate destabilization resulting from a combination of factors.

What are best practices, with respect to sustainability, in farming and agriculture?

People often focus on certain simple issues, like organic farming, or the use of specific harmful chemicals, without looking at the broader picture. Even if everyone in the world were to completely stop using all harmful chemicals in agriculture, and only farm organically, there could still be catastrophic environmental implications of farming. Read more…