National farm crime about to come under the spotlight

University of New England, Armadale, NSW, criminology senior lecturer Kyle Mulrooney said the survey was planned, due to limited knowledge about the true state of crime nationally.

Mr Mulrooney, the co-director for the Centre for Rural Criminology said his team expected to launch the online survey later next month.

"There hasn't been a national survey done, for nearly 20 years - we have lots of data in NSW and Victoria, but nothing elsewhere," Mr Mulrooney said.

"We know that stock theft and rural crime generally is a national issue - it doesn't have borders

"This will increasingly be the case, especially as the value of stock and food security became of increasingly importance.

He said the centre had the resources, the interest and the opportunity to do the research.

He hoped the survey would help policymakers approach the problem through a state-based level, through nationally co-ordinated "means and opportunities".

Statistics were "so unreliable" they should be "taken with a grain of salt, he said.

The latest figures from the Victorian Crime Statistics Agency showed there were 212 incidents of livestock theft in the year ending September 2022, compared with 245 for the same period in 2021.

"But that doesn't tell you anything, it doesn't tell you whether they are going down or up, it makes you think about how many have gone unreported in that time, and why."

"We know from victimisation surveys we have done, farmers tend not to report crimes and there are many reasons for this," he said.

"We know farmers tend to have low levels of satisfaction with the police - primarily it's a frustration that the police can't do much about stock theft.

"My colleague tells a funny story of a cop rocking up because a farmer had some rams stolen and the officer thought it was an American pick-up truck.

"Right there the frustration starts, because you are not talking the same language - you are not on the same level."

He said NSW was a global leader in farm crime prevention and detection, due to the resources, attention and professionalism dedicated to the issue was "somewhat unmatched" elsewhere.

Farmers who had direct interaction with the NSW Rural Crime Prevention Team had greater levels of satisfaction and "they are much more likely to report crime".

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"Typically this crime is undertaken by people with cultural knowledge - what we mean by that is someone who knows how to muster and move livestock, not only through the paddocks and onto the back of a truck, but also where to move them and where to sell them," he said.

While there was no hard evidence organised crime was becoming involved in stock theft, anecdotal information pointed to that happening.

Groups such as outlawed motorcycle gangs had already been caught targeting rural properties for firearms.

"It doesn't matter if it's drugs, humans, or stock, they will traffick it," he said.

The lack of research was down to funding and interest in the problem.

"I think, as is the case with many rural problems, it tends to play second fiddle to many city problems and so that's where the funding, and therefore a lot of the research, will tend to go to those sorts of issues," he said.

It could be weeks, or months, before the theft was discovered.

"It's quite easy to commit, from a crime prevention standpoint - there are not many what we call formal guardians, ie police, kicking around paddocks," he said.

"There are also not many informal guardians, the farmer is not always in his paddock, always checking on the stock on a very regular basis - it's just impractical."

But increasingly technology was helping, with a recent trial of Ceres satellite tags showing "brilliant" results.

The 'mock theft' involved monitoring data from 20 tagged sheep as they were moved from the UNE SMART Farms towards the Tamworth abattoirs, with near instant notifications alerting the research team to a problem.

"Twelve minutes after the arrival of the thieves, a formal 'high activity alert' was received from six of the 20 tags indicating the sheep were being 'agitated' - or moving much faster than normal - which suggests a problem," Dr Mulrooney said.

But he said the biggest issue was cost - made worse by COVID and delays in computer chips.

"Farmers have got feed costs, they have got a million other things chipping away at their bottom line," he said

"The last thing they want is to fork out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to protect their farm from crime.

"A lot of them just chalk it up as a cost of doing business."