The fresh produce industry needs to make itself more desirable to potential workers.

That's according to David Camp, director of the Association of Labour Providers (ALP), who has warned of a pervading uncertainty about sourcing crop-pickers following the abolition of the Season Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS).

Camp was speaking at yesterday's (23 July) Fruit Focus event in Kent.

He said: 'There has been a reasonable supply of labour this year, and generally, there's a measured degree of confidence about 2015 as well.

'After that, though, there's more uncertainty, and every single grower needs to take responsibility. The industry has a responsibility to make it somewhere where people actually want to work, and we can't have a situation where this is the workplace of last resort, somewhere entirely undesirable.

'The last thing we want is a situation where British crops aren't being picked.'

Camp noted that labour providers are 'in competition' with government immigration policy and the fight to tackle unemployment when it comes to a future replacement for SAWS - which involved around 22,000 Romanians and Bulgarians being employed annually to pick fruit and vegetables on British farms, before being ended earlier this year when labour market restrictions on citizens from those countries lapsed.

He added that the ALP is working with the NFU to monitor worker numbers every month, and that they will keep the government abreast of any shortages.

As for the prospect of getting more unemployed Brits to pick fruit, an idea farming minister George Eustice is keen on, Camp said: 'There are programmes to convince indigenous people to come and work in this sector, but we think only a small number of workers will come from there in future.'

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