Farms are usually incredibly noisy and busy places, replete with hulking great pieces of machinery dotted all over the place.

The tranquillity and, frankly, the immaculate tidiness of Steve Howard’s farm in the north Nottinghamshire village of Treswell therefore comes as quite the shock.

The various outbuildings on this incredibly scenic site are all closed off and only one solitary tractor is visible to the naked eye in the outbuilding where Mr Howard is waiting for us.

The state of this site is not down to fastidiousness on Mr Howard’s part, but is instead down to the need this business feels to protect itself from rural crime.

The 52-year-old farmer, who manages 1,000 acres of arable land at his site, says: “If we got broken into, I wouldn’t expect the police to come. I don’t want to pull the police down, but there isn’t a police presence here now.

“Twenty years ago we would have left tractors in the fields overnight – we would never do that now.

“All the farm is barricaded up like Fort Knox. That takes time out of your day and it’s more labour and the cost of the barricading – it’s all added cost.”

Matt Turner, who manages a 2,000-acre farm by Clumber Park near Worksop, says it is getting to a “dangerous” point where farmers may have to consider taking matters into their own hands.

The 42-year-old himself has chased thieves across his fields in a pick-up truck, but the criminals are often armed with items like crow bars and angle grinders, making such pursuits incredibly risky.

Mr Turner, who is also a Reform UK councillor in Bassetlaw, said: “We’ve just spent an absolute fortune re-cladding a shed to secure everything inside.

“It’s absolutely rife at the moment. People are just [fed up] with it now and we’re at a point where something is going to go drastically wrong because someone is going to end up challenging these criminals.”

One incident in recent years saw criminals cause £20,000 of damage to a crop sprayer as they attempted to steal as much kit from it as possible, with that machine being out of action for around a month as a result.

Robert Jenrick, the Reform UK MP for Newark, is putting pressure on Nottinghamshire Police in terms of how it handles rural crime.

The MP says that research from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) shows Nottinghamshire only has one officer solely dedicated to rural crime and that they focus their time on “stakeholder engagement” rather than responding to incidents.

That differs to the service of police forces in neighbouring counties, where dedicated rural crime units are staffed by several expert officers.

Mr Jenrick said: “Nottinghamshire Police, whilst there are many good officers, isn’t doing the same service to rural communities that neighbouring counties like Leicestershire and Lincolnshire are.

“What we want to see is a proper unit, staffed by people with real expertise, who could be out and about tackling these issues like fly-tipping, quad bikes, hare coursing and tractors being stolen.

“That is what we actually need. We’re going to be putting pressure on the new Chief Constable and the Police and Crime Commissioner to step up and take rural life seriously, ensuring that there’s a real police presence here, and that there are trained officers dedicated to farming.”

Gabriella Gregory, the NFU’s county advisor for Nottinghamshire and South Lincolnshire, says the effective work of neighbouring counties can end up pushing more rural crime into Nottinghamshire.

Ms Gregory says the NFU are “willing to work with all partners” on ensuring an effective rural crime unit, similar to Derbyshire’s six-strong rural crime unit.

The NFU adviser added: “It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s incredibly effective.”

The measures Mr Howard has taken mean that theft has not been as much of an issue for Oaklands Farm, but even the scourge of fly-tipping causes pressures on the business.

Mr Howard, who has farmed on his current site for just over 10 years, said: “Every entrance to a field has to be gated or barricaded. They’ll even fly-tip in the middle of the day and they can do it within 10 minutes of you leaving a field.

“The next thing for us is going to have to be electric gates. I’ve resisted so far because of the cost, but it will have to happen in the next couple of years because you now have to keep the gates secure in the day.”

Chief Inspector Clive Collings, Nottinghamshire Police’s rural and wildlife crime lead, believes the system that the force has in place is “preferable” to rural crime units in neighbouring counties.

The chief inspector said rural crime remains a “key priority” for the force, explaining: “The force has installed a structure which includes one of the largest neighbourhood policing footprints in the country.

“Within this there are a significant number of officers based across non-urban areas of the county, who receive specialist training in rural offending and wildlife crime legislation.

“Those officers are in a position to understand local concerns and tailor a policing response to match community needs.

“To be absolutely clear, this amounts to in excess of 40 officers based within Nottinghamshire’s rural areas whose primary role is to engage with communities, solve their problems and target criminality – which is far in excess of most other forces across the region and wider country.

“In our opinion, a structure which sees specially trained, rurally-based officers, embedded within local communities, is preferable to a significantly smaller rural crime team to cover an entire county.”

Chief Inspector Collings also says Nottinghamshire Police has invested in specialist vehicles like 4x4s, off-road bikes and a quad bike to tackle rural crime, as well as becoming the first force in the country to provide drones directly to communities.

The force’s Rural, Wildlife and Heritage Crime Partnerships manager is also described as someone who acts as an “advocate” for rural communities and delivers rural crime training to all new recruits and call handling staff.

Yet in terms of the more than 40 neighbourhood officers in Nottinghamshire’s rural areas, Mr Jenrick says those officers are often “sucked” into dealing with pressing incidents in the nearby towns, meaning crimes affecting farms are often overlooked.

Mr Howard says he usually only expects to get a crime incident number from Nottinghamshire Police, whilst Mr Turner says he doesn’t always even get one of those, with the latter adding: “We feel like distant relatives up here and it’s really frustrating.”

Nottinghamshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Gary Godden, said: “It is vitally important to me that Nottinghamshire Police offers a first class service to everyone, regardless of whether they live in a rural or urban community.

“Across the county, the force prioritises its response and neighbourhood problem solving efforts according to threat, risk and harm to the public.

“This means that a report of domestic abuse in an isolated rural community is likely to receive a more urgent response than a report of criminal damage to a farmer’s land. Both are rural crimes and both will be investigated – but when managing finite resources, the police must assess which ones they tackle first.”

Mr Godden says that those in rural communities should “get to know” their local neighbourhood policing teams and report everything to them, but Mr Turner added: “We’re told to report everything and we do and often we just get no response. I’ve spent more time talking to victim support services than to anyone actually investigating.”