Curse of the crop circle: cost to farms totals £30,000 since 2018

Arable land that would make up more than 40 football pitches has been affected by crop circles in England since 2018, according to an analysis.

The Guardian has found that farmers lost £30,000 in income between 2018 and 2022 owing to the presence of 92 crop circles of varying sizes.

The wheat and barley lost over the period could have made 300,000 loaves of bread, and the flattened rapeseed produced 600 litres of oil.

Crop circles have come under scrutiny this year for the toll they are taking on harvests amid the global food crisis. Grain prices have surged since Russia invaded Ukraine; both countries are leading suppliers of crops to the global markets.

The price per tonne of wheat on the London futures markets has jumped 30% since 2021, while barley’s price has risen by almost 40% – making crop circles substantially more damaging to farmers’ wallets.

“They wiped out all of the wheat, around three or four tonnes of it,” said George Hosford, a tenant farmer in north Dorset. Hosford woke up on 18 July 2021 to find a crop circle measuring 70 metres in diameter and with seven points of symmetry had been created overnight in one of his fields.

He said: “Pictures of the circle were up on the internet within hours. Yet it was in a really remote position. It couldn’t be overseen from anywhere aside from a small patch of my neighbour’s land – he was the one who pointed it out to me. It’s done by people using ropes, boards and ladders to flatten parts of the crop. It’s usually in wheat because it’s fine and upstanding, barley leans a lot so the patterns don’t look as neat.”

Hosford estimates he lost about £1,000 in income because of the crop circle. He said he had spent almost

£200 on fertiliser, seeds and other costs for the damaged patch.

After crop circles are created sightseers often exacerbate the damage by entering the field and trampling untouched parts. Locations of circles are listed on websites for enthusiasts.

Although “circle makers” do not generally damage the grains by squashing them down, harvesting affected areas becomes close to impossible. Hosford said combine harvesters could not cut below 15cm of the ground. “Otherwise, you scrape up soil and stones and you wreck the machine.”

Farmers with crop circles have little recourse; the insurance excess fees are often too high to make claiming worthwhile. Hosford said he did not report the July crop circle to police as he had the impression that it would not have been taken seriously.

Although 15 crop circles covered about 55,000 sq metres of grain in Wiltshire between 2021 and 2022, police in the area received only three reports of criminal damage relating to these incidents, according to data obtained under freedom of information requests.

Crop circles disproportionately affect farmers in Wiltshire, with 63% of all recorded incidents since 2018 having occurred in the county.

Patty Greer, a crop circle researcher from Colorado, in the US, said: “Wiltshire has been the epicentre of documented crop circle appearances for the last 40 years. Many crop circles have been located near the Avebury stone circle, Stonehenge and Glastonbury. Almost all documented crop circles are on a ley line, a direct line between two sacred sites.”

Hampshire, another popular location for circle creators, has had 27% of England’s recorded crop circles since 2018. The remaining 10% of incidents were spread between Dorset, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshire.