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Saturday 23 June 2018

Brexit: and why there is no compulsion to pick fruit >>> high levels of employment in the UK and the difficulty of commuting in rural areas

Will there be strawberries at Wimbledon?
Futures Forum: Brexit: and rotting strawberries

Caroline Nye is a researcher at the University of Exeter, who has looked into this: 

Caroline's research focuses on the ‘blind spot’ of agricultural research: farm labour. 
It contributes an original analysis of the composition of contemporary farm labour in the South West of England, as well as examining social, attitudinal, and behavioural changes that have arisen from transformations in the agricultural labour situation over the last fifty years. 
It examines the premise that, whilst traditional workers have declined, self-employed contractors and intermittent farm workers are on the increase within UK agriculture. 
The casualisation of agricultural labour into a more ‘flexible’ workforce is a largely ignored phenomenon in agricultural research when considered alongside more traditional forms of labour, at the micro level, especially in the case of self-employed contractors.

E-profiles University of Exeter

Farmers in the West Country are using contractors to find workers:
Research news - Farmers increasingly relying on agricultural contractors, new research shows Research - Research at Exeter - University of Exeter

She wrote a piece for the Huffington Post earlier this year:
Farming Out The Field Work Won't Stop Migrant Worker Exploitation Post-Brexit

And she is featured in a piece today from the i newspaper - explaining why it is going to be so difficult to recruit local pickers in the West Country:

British strawberries are at risk after Brexit because UK workers are ‘too picky’ to pick fruit



Worker Benjamin picks fruit on Chegworth Valley Farm. Photo: Justin Sutcliffe

Friday June 22nd 2018

It is only 30 minutes into my trial shift as a strawberry picker at Chegworth Valley Farm in Kent, but the fields already seem to stretch forever. Around me, the mostly Romanian workers are moving steadily, relentlessly, using two hands to deposit the succulent red berries in rows of punnets on a cart at their feet. They soon pull away from me – it’s clear I’m not picking my share.

Increasingly, it has been reported, these imported workers are disappearing. There are dire warnings that Britain’s strawberries will be left to rot as the spectre of Brexit makes foreign labour harder to find.

Max Fane, the marketing manager at Chegworth Valley, which supplies a range of fruit and vegetables to its own farm shops in London, plus restaurants (including Jamie Oliver’s), is rightly unimpressed at my efforts.

“It’s physical work, but it’s not difficult or overly strenuous and we use a raised table system, which is fairly common in the industry now, which means, at least for strawberries, the back-breaking element of the job is gone,” he says.
Peeling away

Nonetheless, we are picking in long plastic polytunnels and after about an hour, I’m sweating profusely. It’s no wonder most fruit pickers start at 6am, before the heat hits the narrow tunnels. It’s surprisingly solitary work too. Each picker gets into their own rhythm and follows their own path.

Given the nature of the work, the limited picking season and rural locations, it’s no surprise that Britons have long preferred to hand picking-duties over to eastern European migrants. Now though, with the UK’s looming departure from the EU, farmers are warning that a lack of migrant labour will put the UK’s food security at risk.


Benjamin from Romania picks with both hands. Photo: Justin Sutcliffe

British recruiters in Romania used to take their pick of workers and even use dexterity tests to find the quickest operators. That’s no longer the case. In May alone there were more than 1,500 unfilled vacancies on British farms and the National Farmers Union (NFU) is concerned that the shortage of labour will hit 30 per cent during peak harvest season.

Each year around 90,000 seasonal workers bring in British crops and with fewer of them coming from countries like Poland, Romania and Bulgaria due to uncertainty created by Brexit and the weakened pound.

Farmers across the country are already reporting that they are planning to plant less, while several have already gone to the wall. According to the English Apples and Pears growers association, almost a third of its members are scaling back their operations due to the labour shortage.


Hot potato

The Association of Labour Providers has warned that 49 per cent of its members do not expect to be able to supply sufficient numbers of workers this year.

“The production of soft fruit in the UK is almost exclusively reliant on seasonal workers from the EU. Yet nearly two years after the Brexit referendum, we are still no further forward in understanding how recruitment will work once we leave the EU,” says Nick Marston, the chairman of industry body British Summer Fruits.

The issue has become a political football too.


Jamie Merill tries his hand in the polytunnels at Chegworth Valley Farm. Photo: Justin Sutcliffe

“Britain has a proud farming heritage and Brexiteers are putting all that at risk,” says Layla Moran MP, a spokesperson for Best for Britain, a pro-EU campaign group.

Many industry insiders say the labour shortage has broader economic causes.

“We are seeing a real shortfall of people coming into our agencies in Romania and Bulgaria. We’ve run focus groups on why, and Brexit doesn’t really come up,” says Stephanie Maurel, the chief executive of labour provider Concordia, which brings 10,000 workers a year into the UK. The only real Brexit ripple is the impact of the weaker pound, which means it now makes more financial sense for Romanian or Bulgarian workers to go to Germany.”

Further afield

Currently UK farmers can’t recruit seasonal labour from outside the EU because of a decision made by David Cameron’s government in 2013 to end the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme.

At various points in its history it had allowed workers from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia to come to the UK on seasonal visas. Similar schemes still operate across Europe but the approach was scrapped in the UK when Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU.

“We warned then that there would be labour shortages within five years and that’s exactly what has happened,” says Ali Capper, the National Farmers Union’s horticulture board chair. We are the only country in the EU that relies on EU migrant labour. Elsewhere in Europe you’ll find Ukrainian and even Nepalese pickers. That’s the answer.”


Punnets of fresh strawberries may well be harder to come by following Brexit. Photo: Justin Sutcliffe

But what about British workers? In 2016 following the Brexit vote, Andrea Leadsom, the then Environment Secretary said she hoped more youngsters would take up jobs as fruit pickers. This has not happened.

Attempts to find British workers have failed repeatedly, and the latest NFU data suggests that there could be as few as 300 British strawberry pickers. The main issue, growers and farmers agree, is that the work is strenuous and not brilliantly paid. But the solution isn’t as simple as finding more cash.

There are no official figures, but most pickers earn above the minimum wage with some earning as much as £14 an hour.

“The bad old days of cash-in-hand are long gone,” says Mr Fane. “Our staff get subsidised accommodation, pay taxes and are offered a pension.”

Seasoned issues

Benjamin Gombos, 32, a Romanian picker who has returned to Chegworth Valley with his wife for the third year in a row, isn’t sure why British workers don’t take up the work.

“It’s easy work really, and the money is good. I can earn here in a week what would take me a month to earn back home.” But what about Brexit, I ask. “It hasn’t changed anything,” he says.

The real barriers, says Caroline Neye, an academic from Exeter University who studies labour trends, are high levels of employment in the UK and the difficulty of commuting in rural areas. The benefits system also deters unemployed people from taking up seasonal work.

“Add this to the inconsistency of work availability itself, and there is little wonder why there is no compulsion to pick fruit,” she says. “But even if incentives were improved, British workers would still be unlikely to perform it because of how the work is perceived.”

It’s a point that Fane agrees with. “I do wonder if young British workers might see picking fruit as a little demeaning, which is a shame because it isn’t – I’d be queuing up for this work if I was a student.”


Too picky to pick fruit? Lack of British workers after Brexit threatens farming
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