Farmer’s site locked up ‘like ‘Fort Knox’ as he ‘wouldn’t expect’ police to attend break-in report
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 …
