LARGE FORMAT - When our farmers grow cameras

Agriculture - Fishing DOSSIER: The Large Format report of France Bleu Isère-

"Grand format" sets out to meet Isère farmers who have or will succumb to an increasingly widespread trend: video surveillance of farms agricultural. Cameras are gaining ground in the face of insecurity or the feeling of insecurity in the countryside.

They are here. Sometimes clearly visible near a greenhouse. Sometimes more hidden. Cameras are making more and more room for themselves on farms, changing lifestyles, in the face of actions that sometimes defy the imagination. At Le Bouchage, near Morestel, a couple of organic farmers have 4,000 pumpkins stolen in one night! In Saint-Marcellin a farm and its outbuildings go up in smoke. "No track is excluded" say the investigators but there are three fire starts. Growing insecurity or growing sense of insecurity, either way the result is the same. Smile, you're being filmed ! Even in the countryside.

Raw data

Precise figures of acts of delinquency and incivility against farmers are not easy to find. Because crime in rural areas is not specifically listed in this way, between farmers and others. With the exception in recent years of acts related to what has been called agribashing, which decreased in 2020 in Isère according to the prefecture and have been rather stable over the first nine months of this year.

The fact remains that damage to property has increased in recent years in the gendarmerie areas - which mainly cover rural areas or small towns - and that in Isère an agreement was recently reactivated between the chamber of agriculture, the prefecture and Gendarmerie for the establishment of referents in the brigades and for better feedback of information.

A delinquency that sometimes manifests itself in a spectacular way

In February 2021 in Saint-Marcellin, the Jany farm went up in smoke. All leads remain open according to investigators. Except that here there were three fire starts on three separate buildings. The criminal trail is beyond doubt for the son, Jules Jany, who has stopped wasting time wondering who is how "because we don't get out of it and the questions remain unanswered". Because we also had to get up as quickly as possible to harvest walnuts despite everything this year, in the only building still standing, with equipment bought back thanks to an advance from insurance and the help of neighboring farmers. Still with a lump in his stomach, "of course, so suddenly we warned the neighbors, as soon as there is a noise, that the dogs bark, my father gets up..."

In the future building there will be cameras, doors and alarms everywhere. Regretfully says Jules Jany. "We have always lived, we have always worked a little as a family. My grandfather is retired but he always comes to do his little trick. So that means that if there we close all the buildings, that we put alarms he will have to understand that he can no longer come back [...] but hey, we have no choice". Other farmers should follow: there have been three unexplained farm fires in one year in the country of Saint-Marcellin.

In another genre, in October 2021 at Le Bouchage, near Morestel, Wilfried and Amandine Gagneux suffered a theft... of squash! Organic squash stolen as if they were truffles. We are far from pilferage: 4,000 pumpkins disappeared in one night. The work of "professionals", "equipped", with behind "a kind of parallel market" necessarily for Amandine.

Since the couple, recently established in agriculture, and already the victim of a lesser theft last year, plans to reinforce the security of its production with "a hunting camera system, which warns on the mobile when there is an intrusion. We may be woken up by a deer or a wild boar but also by people entering the plot, a truck..." The cost of the equipment is still holding them back but for how long ?

Aid for equipment from the Isère departmental council

The temptation of cameras and the demand are so present in the agricultural world that the department of Isère adopted in April 2021 a deliberation to help farmers equip themselves with video surveillance. Costs are covered up to 80%, up to a maximum of 4,000 euros. To fight against the theft of fuel, hives, small equipment and fires. And then finally these cameras can also alert more quickly of the beginning of an accidental disaster, allow to monitor the animals in the barn and the cow ready to calve. They have therefore probably not finished interfering in our campaigns as well.