British farmers are increasingly concerned that they will lose their farm hands if some sort of visa situation isn’t worked out for seasonal workers after the Brexit is accomplished. Over 99% of harvesters are cheap labour imported from eastern Europe, well over 85,000 in number, and if a visa plan isn’t soon determined, many of Britain’s farmers face catastrophe.
Sky news reports
British farmers and growers are facing the “soul destroying” prospect of leaving more crops to rot in the fields unless a post-Brexit visa scheme for seasonal workers is announced soon.
Parts of the UK’s army of seasonal fruit and vegetable pickers have already started to look for jobs in other parts of the EU after receiving no firm assurances that they will still be welcome after Brexit.
The overwhelming majority of those who harvest our crops are eastern European – just 0.6% of the 85,000-strong workforce is British.
Romanians, Bulgarians and other eastern Europeans, who all pay taxes here in the UK, are a vital cog in how British produce gets from our fields to our shops.
For over a year now, British farmers and growers have been calling on the Home Office to promise to reintroduce a seasonal worker visa scheme after Brexit.
The last one was scrapped five years ago due to freedom of movement within the EU.
But the political impasse means recruiting from eastern Europe has become more difficult. Figures from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) show that the shortfall in seasonal workers is about 30%.
In the Wye Valley in Herefordshire, where the Chinn Family have harvested crops since the 1920s, harvest manager Elina Kostadinova explained: “They have families, they need to provide for them and they need security.
“We have lost people from last year… they have moved to other countries in the EU.”
Farmer Chris Chinn told Sky News he is a realist and not another Brexit “remoaner”.
In total, his business employs up to 1,000 seasonal workers and they have struggled to fill their positions this season.
Twice during their asparagus season they had to leave crops unpicked in the fields – something he describes as “soul destroying”.
He said: “Without staff we don’t harvest the crops, if we can’t harvest the crops we are going to stop planting the crops… that means that business disappears and that means those crops disappear from the supermarket shelves.”
While many of the seasonal pickers enjoy working and living in the UK for part of the year, they could easily find similar work elsewhere in the EU.
On the blueberry packing lines on the farm, technical supervisor Monica Sermas, from Romania, explained the work is the same in different countries. “It doesn’t matter for them [her colleagues] that much, they still want a job and that can be anywhere,” she said.
“They just want to know the future here.”
Just in like in America, farmers make use of the cheap labour of foreigners to do their farm labour. In America, those farm hands aren’t always legal, in Europe, there is this freedom of movement thing, which makes it easy to travel and work in any EU member state as a European citizen. However, once Brexit is done and Britain is no longer in the customs union, the question comes up about visa requirements and expenses for foreign labour. British farmers are not about to hire Brits to do that work, because they’re not about to pay those kinds of wages, so that British fruit and produce is destined to rot in the fields if the Brexit hits a little too hard.
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