Crop circles wipe out 40 football pitches worth more than £1 million in damage

More than 40 football pitches worth of arable land have been affected by crop circles in England since 2018, according to an analysis carried out by the Guardian.

Between 2018 and 2022, farmers lost 30,000 in income due to 92 crop circles of different sizes. The wheat and barley lost over the period could have produced 300,000 loaves of bread, and the flattened rapeseed could have produced 600 litres of canola oil.

Crop circles have come under particular scrutiny this year because of the unwelcome toll they are taking on farmers harvests at a time of the global food crisis. The price of grain has gone up since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, with both countries being major suppliers of crops to the global markets.

The price of wheat on London future markets has gone up by 30% since 2021, while the price of barley has gone up by almost 40%, making crop circles more damaging for farmers wallets.

George Hosford, a tenant farmer in North Dorset, said they wiped out all of the wheat, about three or four tonnes of it.

Hosford woke up on July 18th, 2021 to find a crop circle having been created overnight in one of his fields, measuring 70 m in diameter and seven points of symmetry.

Mr Hosford told the Guardian that he doesn't believe this rubbish is done by aliens. Within a few hours, pictures of the circle were up on the internet.

It was in a really remote position. It couldn't be supervised from anywhere other than a small patch of my neighbour's land, he was the one who pointed out to me, Hosford explained.

It is done by people using ropes, boards and ladders to flatten parts of the crop, and usually in wheat, because it is fine and upstanding. Barley, on the other hand, leans a lot, so the patterns don't look as neat. Hosford estimates that he lost 1,000 in income due to the crop circle. He has already spent almost 200 on fertiliser, seeds and other operational costs for the damaged patch.

After crop circles are created, the sightseers can exacerbate the damage by entering the field and trampling over the untouched parts. The locations of circles are usually listed on websites for enthusiasts.

Even though circle makers don't usually damage the grains by squashing them down, harvesting the affected areas becomes close to impossible.

Hosford explained that combine harvesters can't cut below 15 centimetres of the ground.

He said that if you scrape up soil and stones, you're wrecking the machine.

Farmers afflicted by crop circles have little recourse, with their insurance excess fees often too high to make claiming worthwhile.

Hosford said he did not report the July crop circle to police because he had the impression that it would not have been taken seriously.

According to the data obtained under Freedom of Information requests, 15 crop circles covered about 55,000 square metres of grain in Wiltshire between 2021 and 2022, but police in the area received only three reports of criminal damage related to these incidents.

Farmers in Wiltshire are disproportionately affected by crop circles, with 63% of all recorded incidents occurring in the county since 2018.

Patty Greer, a crop circle researcher from Colorado in the US, told The Guardian: Wiltshire has been the epicenter of documented crop circle appearances for the last 40 years.

Many crop circles are located near the Glastonbury Stone Circle, Stonehenge and Avebury Stone Circle. Almost all of the documented crop circles are located on a ley line, which is a direct line between two sacred sites on a map, said Greer.

Neighbouring Hampshire is also a popular location for circle creators, and has been the site of 27% of England's recorded crop circles since 2018. The rest of the incidents were spread between Dorset, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshire.