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21 Aug 2018
£50k of fungicide stolen days after farmers told of 62% rural crime rise in Scotland
Thieves in the east of Scotland have celebrated the announcement of the latest rural crime figures by simply carrying on as before.
Sometime between Sunday evening and Monday morning (August 4-5) an on-farm chemical store at Colliston, near Arbroath, was broken into and 1,000 litres of Tizca fungicide stolen.
Tizca contains fluazinam and is widely used against late blight. It also helps prevent powdery scab in seed potato crops.
The haul was valued at £50,000.
According to Police Scotland it is the latest of a spate of similar thefts across the north east of Scotland and they said it was likely the thefts could be linked.
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A statement said: “As a consequence, we would like to ask farmers to check on the security of their storage sheds and compounds – particularly chemical stores – and should they see any persons acting suspiciously around them to call us immediately.”
It came as Scotland was revealed as the area hardest hit by rural crime in NFU Mutual’s Rural Crime Report, with claims costs up 62.2 per cent in 2018.
Then on Tuesday (August 6) a Honda quad bike was stolen in broad daylight from Hilltarvit Mains, near Cupar, in plain sight of the farmhouse.
The farmers, Ian Whiteford and his son, John, were only minutes away and just missed intercepting the hooded thieves on the one-mile long farm road.
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Mr Whiteford said: “They left a newer model which I think they guessed, correctly as it happens, would be fitted with a tracker.
“The quads are usually locked in the workshop but because we were using the building during the day, they were parked round the corner in the cattle shed.
“We are very security conscious but you cannot eternally be locking up every conceivable thing up. It is just bloody annoying.”
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