The president of the National Farmers' Union, Meurig Raymond has warned that the UK horticulture sector is facing a potential labour crisis as shortages of migrant labour and the debilitating costs of the National Living wage pose a threat to UK fruit and veg businesses.
A survey of 289 NFU horticulture members employing nearly 14,000 seasonal workers showed 29 per cent experienced problems sourcing an adequate supply of seasonal workers in 2015.
New NFU horticulture board chairman Ali Capper described the results as ‘very scary’.
She said the NLW, which started this month, effectively equated to a 7 per cent year-on-year increase for the next five years when it would otherwise have been ‘2-2.5 per cent’.
Turnover
“The reason it hurts so much in the fruit and veg sector wages often account for 40-70 per cent of turnover,” she said.
She said the board’s ‘top priority’ was to mitigate the impact for members, including lobbying the Home Office for the introduction of a new scheme open to agricultural students from all over the world to undertake seasonal harvest work.
The board will also seek an exemption from the Treasury for seasonal workers in agricultural businesses from payment of employers’ National Insurance and ask the Department for Work and Pensions to exempt growers from auto enrolment of pensions for seasonal workers.
Ms Capper, who farms on the Herefordshire-Worcestershire border, said the UK was already the second most expensive place in Europe to grow horticulture crops and 'one of the most expensive in the world.
She described how some growers in her region were responding to the situation by buying farms in Portugal where labour was less than half the cost, rather than seek to expand in the UK.
Export the industry
Mr Raymond said the NLW was also affecting the rest of the supply chain, including pack houses and retailers.
“It is vital we secure these measures to mitigate the costs of the Living Wage.
"If we are not careful we will export our horticulture industry to southern Europe and north Africa as big businesses uproot and leave the UK,” he said.
