With horned Highland cattle, neat stone walls and a tiny church that dates from the 15th century on its land, Cowage Farm in Foxley, in southwestern England, hardly looks like a crime scene. But as Tom Collins completed paperwork in his farmhouse one morning, an employee interrupted to ask what he’d done with a computer screen in one of his tractors. It turned out that the equipment, along with two GPS systems, had been stolen from two farm vehicles overnight. Standing in the yard where the theft took place, Mr. Collins said the most unnerving thing was that criminals must have watched him to know where his tractors would be. They are also under pressure from an overhaul of the subsidies available to them after Brexit, and from inflation and tax changes that have prompted tractor protests outside Parliament.

Source: The Times April 22, 2025 13:03 UTC