Russian Troops Reportedly Loot $5 Million of Farm Equipment, Only to Find It Remotely Locked
Finally, an ethical use of the Deere security system.
Russian Troops Reportedly Loot $5 Million of Farm Equipment, Only to Find It Remotely Locked
Finally, an ethical use of the Deere security system.
Reports of Russian soldiers looting during their invasion and occupation of Ukraine have been quite varied in terms of the actual loot that’s been taken: artwork from a museum in Mariupol, appliances taken from Ukrainian homes and shipped to markets in Belarus and possibly even radioactive material from Chernobyl.
Apparently, agricultural equipment has joined that list. CNN’s Olexsandr Fylyppov and Tim Lister report that Russian troops in the city of Melitopol, which has been under attack for weeks, have stolen around $5 million worth of agricultural equipment from a John Deere dealership. Melitopol’s Museum of Local History was also, according to the New York Times, hit by looters, who stole a valuable collection of Scythian gold dated to more than 2,000 years ago.
According to CNN, 27 pieces of agricultural equipment were stolen, including combine harvesters and tractors. Russian military looters have, according to various reports, shipped stolen goods over land to friendly countries, notably Belarus. These particular agricultural items from Melitopol were shipped to Chechnya, but as with John Deere equipment worldwide, these were equipped with remote lock mechanisms that rendered them inoperable.
Eastern Europe is known to be home to hackers who can make some use of remote-locked equipment, although, as earlier reports pegged the best-known hackers as Ukrainian, it’s not clear that the looters will have too much luck in recruitment. At worst, from the point of view of the looters, they may be able to strip the machinery of parts to be sold separately.
Follow us
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
May 4, 2022
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
SubmitNecessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies.