Pretty much everyone living in rural Ontario has a story of someone they know who’s been hit with a farm theft in the past few years.
It might be the pickup truck stolen from the edge of a field while someone was planting, visits to sheds at night picked up by motion-sensor cameras, or a dealership which has lost a tractor or utility vehicle. There are also the cases, reported regularly on Twitter, of tractors and equipment, sometimes large, disappearing from fields.
After significant rise in farm theft in 2022, police say there are precautions farmers should take to avoid losses in equipment and vehicles. They range from the simple to the complex.
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Why it matters: Theft of equipment and other items can result in financial losses to Ontario farmers.
Constable Kevin Martin of the South Bruce Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) said a large component of farm theft prevention simply comes down to the protection of keys.
Martin came up with the #pocketyourkeys campaign to encourage safe keeping of vehicles on Ontario farms.
“The idea behind Pocket Your Keys is the ownership piece, right? Your vehicle, your key, your responsibility,” said Martin. “The ownership piece, this ‘my keys are my keys’ thing really does carry a lot of weight.”
Martin stressed that the most important thing to do is take the small steps to stop vehicles from being seen as easy targets.
“We want to create measures that make it difficult for thieves. Some will hotwire these things, but it’s very rare. There are so many vehicles being taken with the keys, it’s just not worth their time to go through the extra effort.
“Don’t leave an unattended vehicle running — that’s an easy target. If we think of theft as a crime of opportunity, then we can think this theft is a crime of opportunity that you can help control. So pocket your keys.”
Martin said to think of keys as currency. “Do you leave your cash lying around? Do you leave credit cards lying around? So don’t leave your keys lying around.”
Chuck Ellison, farm underwriting manager for Zehr insurance in Listowel, also suggests finding a safe place for keys, but recommended thinking beyond the obvious hiding places.
“Everybody knows to check under the mat and check under the visor for the keys.”
Like Martin, Ellison said that many of the personal vehicle thefts he has observed do not involve complex hotwiring, but are often simple crimes of opportunity, an easy way for thieves to get “from point A to point B.”
Ellison said farm theft was up during the pandemic, though it has since fluctuated. He said he has seen farmers start to take extra precautions to guard their equipment, including security cameras.
“Just something that’ll keep track of, you know, 48 hours to a week or whatever and then it just writes over itself, so if stuff does go missing, they’ve at least got that just to help mitigate that.
“I have a bunch of clients, if they have a piece of equipment that always sits in the same place, they have a camera that is dedicated to that space.”
Martin said that beyond the cost to the farmers themselves, farm theft can take a toll on communities as a whole.
“What happens when your vehicle is taken? Do they run somebody over? Do they shuttle stolen property? Yes, it is a horrible thing when your vehicle is taken. But there’s also a social cost as well, greater than your loss.”
Some farm equipment distributors have introduced innovative anti-theft technology. Mallory Everson, precision ag manager at Green Tractors Omemee, said GPS tracking in John Deere equipment is becoming more widespread.
“We have a product called JDLink now. We started out on the larger agricultural side of things, so your heavier freight tractors, combines, that sort of thing, but now, as of model year 2024, we’ll have it in our compact utility tractors.”
Everson explained that JDLink is essentially a modem called a modular telematics gateway (MTG).
“It’s in your tractor, it has a cellular signal and there’s also data packages along with that. It allows a cellular network to track where that machine is going, as well as the diagnostics of the tractor.
“You could set geofences, boundaries, stuff like that, so it has helped in a few cases for us, not just logistically… but also that they should be where they should be.”
She said that this type of tracking technology can be helpful for theft prevention on the side of the distributor.
“You show back up at the dealership on Monday and I can pull up those machines, and as long as nothing’s been disabled, I can tell where those machines are if we need to recover them.”
Everson said she has seen a significant increase in interest in GPS tracking of equipment in recent years.
“I think (farmers) are leaning towards more the technology-embedded equipment now because of things like GPS and the tracking ability, just to make sure those machines are where they should be, their operators are where they should be, it’s not being taken outside of property bounds if they set those geofences.”
Everson said one cause of theft was that some locking technology has yet to reach agricultural equipment, leaving it vulnerable.
“We’re a little bit behind the automotive side of things where now you have key fobs that are specific to your machine. If you’re not in it, you can’t get in the vehicle. You can’t start it.
“We’re not quite there yet,” said Everson.
“In a lot of cases, that combine key will turn on many combines out there. There’s a few cuts of keys that will turn on multiple pieces of equipment, so theft is easy for some guys that can pull in with a trailer, have a key cut that matches, you know, 10 machines in that yard, and pull them on a trailer in the middle of the night.”
Martin said this was something he had observed as well.
“I’m not saying a Case key works in Massey Ferguson, but I have heard that keys will work in many different vehicles.”
To avoid thus, he suggested getting a lock for the vehicle door, rather than going through the expensive process of replacing the ignition.
Theft is not only happening to farmers on their property. Everson said it has been an issue in dealerships as well.
“They’re bold. They’ll just cut down your gate, drive in, pull in with flatbeds and hoodies on and off they go.”
