Past two barriers of security, a mile inside the Rothamsted Research centre, I was taken to see what must be the most closely guarded field in the United Kingdom.
To prevent the farmers from occupying them, the landowners struck a deal with the bosses of Cosa Nostra who, armed with rifles, guarded their fields.
Among its many activities, G4S has guarded oil fields in Kazakhstan, provided security at European rock concerts and shopping malls and banks, operated a prison in South Africa, established centers where rape victims can get medical and counselling services in Great Britain, guarded embassies in Afghanistan, and run its own private-investigation service.
The regular army has 17 divisions with thousands of tanks, and the supposedly "elite" Republican Guard fields six divisions, of which three are armoured.
Reports of American Marines and soldiers in southern Afghanistan guarding poppy fields are not exaggerations nor are the stories of helicopters and planes given to the Afghan Air Force being used to ferry drugs.
That's what made Rodney Harrison the all-pro he was - he guarded his area of the field like nobody else would.
Surrounded by orange groves and wheat fields, guarded above by a military blimp that sets off an alert with each rocket launched from Gaza, Sderot has been a tough place to live.
In a contemporary print, uniformed pikemen guard the field and preserve decorum.
Along the halls, there is a farmworker mannequin propped up under a tree with a rifle in his hands, guarding a field of poppies and marijuana.
An experimental fence is guarding a field of sugar cane, which elephants like as much as alcohol.Conservationists, however, know that all of this is a sticking-plaster, not a cure.
FSA fighters, from a unit called the Northern Storm brigade, were guarding the field clinic.
