A string of rural crime incidents has led to some farmers and rural business owners to think twice and increase their security systems.
A farmer in Wroughton, Wiltshire has vowed increase the security in his premises after finding thieves in the farm shop on Sunday 13 November.
Niall Jones, who runs a farm and small shop in the village, said after initially leaving then returning to the shop, he saw a car parked and thought it was a customer.
He told the Swindon Advertiser, "I thought it was a new customer but it was only when I put my head in the room that I saw everything was gone. I ran after them but the car shot down the lane without their lights on and that is when I managed to see that it was a small white hatchback."
Mr Jones said the farm shop ran on 'trust' that people can pick up fresh eggs and pay by themselves.
"It is a shame," he said.
"There are lots of people who do come and buy off us but if we are doing to have things nicked then we have no other choice. It is really irritating because we are providing a service and the village love being able to pop in and buy eggs and we must have over 100 customers come here."
"There is not a lot of money in farming anyway and when we took the farm on last year, we thought how can we sell our things and make it available to the village and community by providing a service," he told the paper.
Wiltshire Police said they are still investigating the incident.
In a separate incident, petrol engines worth thousands of pounds were stolen from a farmers shop in Berkeley Heath, Gloucestershire.
Burglars struck at TCS Country Supplies between 6pm on Tuesday, November 15 and 7.40am on Wednesday 16 November. They forced entry to a warehouse attached to the shop and made off with boxes containing the engines, with a combined value over £20,000.
They are believed to have made off in a stolen blue Land Rover Defender with the registration number M175 SCJ.
'£42.5 million a year'
The cost of rural crime to the UK economy costs £42.5 million a year, according to reports. NFU Mutual’s annual Rural Crime Report shows that despite little change overall, regionally, there were still winners and losers in the war on rural crime.
The worst affected regions remain the North East and East of England, with claims costing £7.9 and £6.9 million respectively.
Tom Shepherd, NFU Mutual Senior Agent in Leicestershire said: "Rural thieves are becoming increasingly sophisticated and using computers rather than bolt cutters to steal from farms and country properties.
"Farmers and police have been working hard to adopt high-tech security measures to tackle the problems which now include: cloning tractor identities, advertising non-existent machinery in agricultural publications and stealing the GPS computer systems which are a key part of modern farming."
North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan said: "Research suggests that our rural communities don’t feel as safe as their counterparts in towns. A survey I commissioned as Chair of the National Rural Crime Network (NRCN) showed that there is large-scale non-reporting of crime in the countryside and levels of satisfaction with the police are considerably lower than they are among town-dwellers."
You can contact the independent crime-fighting charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 to help in these two cases.
