There is a bittersweet irony that as the UK population continues to grow, it gets harder and harder to recruit seasonal and full-time staff on our farms and nurseries. When ‘the people’ spoke last June, immigration levels were seen to be a key part of the leave vote; however, the many failed attempts to recruit UK labour throughout horticulture suggests the leave voters will not be the solution.
For many the leave vote was about taking back control of our country. We now have an opportunity as an innovative, vibrant and health-promoting sector of the UK economy to take back control of much horticultural product that we currently import.
Numerous studies demonstrate that eating a plant-based diet significantly reduces mortality risks from heart disease, cancer and diabetes. UK horticulture products could save the NHS billions, end the obesity epidemic and provide real employment opportunities across the sector. There is strong support for buying British and reducing food miles, while the recent veg crisis shows the dangers of relying on imports.
Now is the time to grow UK horticulture, with government support, not for allowing it to wither on the vine. The unavoidable truth is that the horticulture sector cannot survive without foreign labour, especially seasonal labour for harvesting. Best estimates are that we require 80,000 people, which will only increase as the sector grows.
There are real concerns about availability of seasonal workers this summer. Growers and recruitment companies are finding fewer returnees and potential recruits are questioning whether they will be welcome in the UK. It feels like 2007 again and we were only saved then by the global recession.
I predict that there will be some reports of crops left to rot; although most will get picked, workers will have to be paid more to pick for longer hours and to stay to the end of the season, and thus tight margins will be further eroded.
We desperately need a guaranteed source of seasonal labour post-Brexit, and any scheme needs to be up and running sooner rather than later. I recently gave evidence to the Efra parliamentary committee. The brief was ‘feeding the nation – the constraints of labour’ and I, along with other industry representatives, made it absolutely clear that we cannot persuade local people to do this work, and without a replacement SAWS-type scheme the sector will die. We made the point that this is not immigration, rather a controlled visa scheme, with the workers returning to their own country at the end of their permitted stay.
Finally, there is an urgent need to promote UK horticulture as a career choice for UK nationals. For a number of years growers have found full-time staff from within the pool of willing foreign workers already on site. Brexit is likely to change this.
We urgently need joined-up thinking and action from Defra, the NFU, trade associations, recruitment companies and other representative bodies to jointly promote UK horticulture as a viable, interesting and dynamic career choice.
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