Futures Forum: Brexit: and the impact on the agriculture industry
And a major concern has been the lack of people to work on the land:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and migrant workers not wanting to work on West Country farms
This is the latest from the Financial Times:
UK farmers warn of Brexit-triggered labour crisis
NFU calls for visa-controlled permits for agricultural workers as EU picker numbers dive
Farmers are warning of a labour crisis on the land after a sharp fall in the number of seasonal workers — overwhelmingly from the EU — willing to pick vegetables on Britain’s farms.
Almost half the companies providing agricultural labour said they were unable to fulfil the horticultural sector’s demand for workers between July and September, according to a survey by the National Farmers Union.
This was 30 per cent up on the second quarter and marked a sharp deterioration from the start of the year when none of the labour providers — accounting for 70 per cent of the supply — reported problems finding workers.
The NFU, which will publish the survey by the end of next week, said the supply of pickers for late-season crops such as potatoes and brassicas — cabbages, cauliflowers and turnips — was only enough to meet 67 per cent of the industry’s needs.
Farmers and labour providers fear that seasonal labour is at risk of drying up well before Britain leaves the EU. The NFU has renewed calls for an urgent trial of a visa-controlled permit scheme for seasonal agricultural workers to replace those from the EU.
[There is] a very real risk that British fruit and vegetables will be left to rot unpicked in British fields in 2017
In a letter to Robert Goodwill, the immigration minister, dated November 10 and seen by the FT, Minette Batters, the NFU’s deputy president, warned: “There is a clear emerging labour crisis in the industry” and “a very real risk that British fruit and vegetables will be left to rot unpicked in British fields in 2017”.
John Hardman, director of Kenilworth-based HOPs Labour Solutions, which has a 20 per cent share of the recruitment market for agricultural jobs, said that two years ago 40 per cent of seasonal workers planned to return to the UK. That number had since almost halved to 24 per cent.
He said the fall in the value of the pound and June’s Brexit vote were making Britain less attractive to workers from Bulgaria and Romania — the two countries that provided 84 per cent of temporary labour to the sector between June and September.
“Post-Brexit, Romanians and Bulgarians have had the view that Britain is a xenophobic, anti-European place and that they can go to Germany, Holland and Belgium, with better conditions and earn better wages, since the devaluation of the pound has reduced their net income by 15-20 per cent,” Mr Hardman said.
Post-Brexit, Romanians and Bulgarians have had the view that Britain is a xenophobic, anti-European place and that they can go to Germany, Holland and Belgium, with better conditions and earn better wages
Employment data published this month by the Office for National Statistics showed that the number of Romanians and Bulgarians employed in Britain fell 3 per cent in the third quarter compared with the second quarter, though EU employment as a whole increased.
There was a sixfold rise in the number of seasonal farm workers quitting their jobs early between the first quarter of the year and the third quarter, with 27 per cent deciding to leave their jobs voluntarily between June and September, according to the NFU survey of labour providers.
British horticulture depends on workers from the EU for more than 98 per cent of its 80,000 seasonal workforce — a reliance that Andrea Leadsom, secretary of state at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has said should be brought down by encouraging more British people into the sector.
Defra would not comment on a trial seasonal-workers scheme. “The UK needs a fair and controlled immigration policy and that is exactly what this government will deliver,” said a government spokesman.
UK farmers warn of Brexit-triggered labour crisis
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