Crime Sprees Target Precision Ag Technology at Farms and Dealerships
Theft on the farm is nothing new. Remember the crime spree around anhydrous ammonia just a few years ago?
Now, thieves in farm country are targeting precision ag tools, including yield monitors and various navigation systems.
“It’s been pretty prevalent here recently with (thieves) taking spray equipment from retail locations. You’re talking $6,000 systems between the satellite globe, monitor and related equipment,” says Rock Katschnig, who farms near Prophetstown, Ill. “There was one retail location here in the area where thieves stole six systems out of their spray equipment.”
Up For Grabs
But it’s not only retailers who are being preyed upon. Farmers are being targeted as well.
“One retailer’s customer out in (Iowa) had over 20 systems stolen,” Katschnig told Chip Flory, host of AgriTalk, during a recent conversation. “We have got to be really vigilant that we lock this stuff down and don’t leave it sitting in the field in wide-open spaces.”
Flory notes that once stolen, the systems are not always traceable.
Katschnig adds that he doesn’t believe receivers with FS1 capability are necessarily traceable unless they were registered with the farmer’s equipment dealer. “Newer FS systems and RTK are traceable,” he says.
All About The Payoff
Once the technology is stolen, it can be difficult to locate. There is speculation that the materials are being sold on the black market and used on equipment overseas or pieced out for parts and microchips.
“One individual shared with me it's such an organized group, they feel that they may be shipping everything out of the country very, very quickly, never to be seen again,” Katschnig says.
“Rural America can be a target for very organized crime efforts (for thieves) who want what they want and get it for free,” Flory adds.
Four Ways To Stop Theft
Flory and Katschnig offer four suggestions to help farmers safeguard their technology:
1. For starters, they say don’t leave equipment in the field where it’s more vulnerable to theft.
2. However, if you do leave equipment in the field, unplug monitors, remove any bolts holding it in place, and take it home when you’re done for the day. “You don’t want to lose all that data you have gathered, and that’s stored in those monitors,” Katschnig says.
3. Take pictures of serial numbers on all your equipment, hardware and software, so you can provide that information to local authorities if necessary. That can help prove any recovered technology belongs to you.
4. If you see a vehicle in fields or near fields that you don’t recognize, photograph or write down the license plate information.
“Telling the police, ‘It was a silver Chevrolet with rusted-out fenders' doesn’t go very far. But if you can give the police a solid license plate number, that can narrow their search down very quickly,” Katschnig says.
Stay Safe In The Process
“Keep the binoculars with you, when you're out there driving around, so you don't have to confront these guys,” Flory says.
But he offers the reminder that not everyone you see along farm fields is a potential thief. Some people are just out, enjoying the countryside.
Flory recalls he was driving his truck down a gravel road near home one day recently and saw a pickup pulled over on the side of the road. As he approached the truck, he thought he saw something fly out of the bed and into the ditch.
“I grabbed my phone and was going to get their license plate and turn those guys in for throwing their garbage out. I ended up having to wave and smile at them because what they were throwing out was a round seine net, and they were tossing it into the creek for bait,” he says, laughing. “I just needed to let those good people be.”
Read more stories about crime in agriculture here:
How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam
Cyber Security Concerns in the U.S. Agricultural Sector
Suspects Caught in an Unbelievable Milk Scandal in Miami
While America Slept, China Stole the Farm
The AgriTalk conversation between Flory and Katschnig is available for listening to here:
