Grower Martin Haines of WR Haines in Gloucestershire has said he will revise his cropping away from intensive vegetables such as courgettes due to uncertainties over the future availability of labour.
He told the BBC that he currently requires 80 pickers each year on his farm, but that there is uncertainty over availablility of labour beyond 2024 when the Seasonal Agricultural Workers scheme is due to end. “The numbers [of staff] we’ve booked have arrived but under the source scheme they can only come for six months,” he said. “We need to know what’s going to happen. If we’re not going to have the source scheme continuing after December 2024, then we’ve got to look at just a UK workforce.”
He added that suggestions that British workers could pick crops were unrealistic. “We’ve been working with all the job agencies around the area, and we haven’t had anybody [apply] in the last three years,” he said. He also added that new equipment such as automatic planters still required significant numbers of people to operate them, meaning they were not worth the purchase price.
NFU South director Mel Squires, said it was difficult for farmers to “plan ahead” and urged the government to enable as much migrant labour to be utilised as possible, alongside recruiting UK workers. “Just enough [staff] isn’t great when you’re trying to build resilience into your business,” she said, adding that a failure to recruit UK workers is “not for the lack of trying.
“We’ve seen lots of examples where farmers and growers are trying to work with their local communities, work with local job centres,” she said, “Long term we’ve got to find more solutions to help support our domestic food production, which we need to have secure and sustained for the long term.”