Peter Barfoot’s description of how he came to become one of the nation’s most successful growers makes fascinating reading (p14).

A true tale of grit and determination, Barfoot displayed mountainous resources of energy to drive himself and his company on to be the best.

But Barfoot, like a number of other leading growers lately, has expressed a real fear about who is going to carry the industry forward in future. The next generation is coming through at a trickle rather than a torrent, and there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer on how to deal with it.

There are labour problems every way we look at the moment, with one or two growers starting to report not being able to get the seasonal labour needed to pick their crops in time.

Labour operators, trade organisations, unions and others are already making a great effort to make representations to government that SAWS or a version of it must remain in place.

And we are starting to see a concerted effort to get more young people considering horticulture as a career.

We certainly need these initiatives to succeed, or else it’ll be hard to see where the Peter Barfoots of the future are going to come from.

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