In the county of Kent, farmers and growers employ more than 13,500 people who work across 9,562 hectares of farmland, producing fruit like apples, pears, berries and cherries. Agricultural experts in the county fear for the future of the industry, as it becomes increasingly difficult to hire seasonal workers.
Producers say they are facing a growing struggle to find fruit pickers in particular, as they battle against negative preconceptions of the work being poorly paid.
That, they say, is a popular misconception and that the opportunities are endless for workers willing to venture down that path.
Isobel Bretherton, of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) in the south east, explained how changing legislation is causing real headaches for farmers.
She told KoS: “We had the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS) [which allowed for recruiting eastern European workers on six-month contracts] but that was abolished and border control has changed.
“A lot of Bulgarians and Romanians have come in to work on farms, people from countries in eastern Europe tend to be more used to agricultural work and you can earn a goodliving, you can earn a lot more than you’d perhaps think working on farms if you’re good at it.
“There were about 22,000 workers we could bring into farms on this scheme and they would come here on Home Office permits legally and above board and then go home when their work was finished at the end of the
season.
“So now we’re looking to pull in workers from possibly outside of Europe, anywhere where people would like to come here, work for a short amount of time on the permit and then go home again.
“Because as people’s own economies get better, they tend to go home, that’s what happened with Poland, for example.
“We are worried about where the fruit pickers are going to come from in the future, equally we’re looking at greater mechanisation.''
Businesses employing a higher number of seasonal workers experienced more problems, with the labour-intensive fruit sector being most affected with a survey revealing some 43 per cent of employers experienced problems last year.
