Nick Marston

There is a real skills shortage in UK horticulture at present. It ranges from plant production in nurseries, through husbandry and growing, to harvest and ops management. Many full-time employees in our industry are from the European Economic Area (EEA), so clarity on rights of EEA workers already here is needed urgently.

But the real worry is seasonal labour, which is crucial to the UK berry industry. It’s a seasonal industry with a core year-round workforce of less than 10 per cent. Seasonal workers number 29,000 in UK berries, according to an Andersons report published in June 2017, with a need of 31,000 by 2019 due to the expected growth, even allowing for what automation there will be, as well as the ongoing move to substrate to increase picking speeds. Almost all staff are from the EEA, with 75 per cent from Bulgaria and Romania alone.

Red herrings ministers seem to be fond of include unemployed UK residents. But they are typically based in urban areas, whereas farms are in rural areas. These people often don’t want seasonal work where they know they will be terminated in say six months, and they find it very hard to get back on benefits promptly. In addition, there aren’t many of them and we are at near full employment in the areas where most berry growers are situated.

UK students are another popular ‘solution’, but they are off from early July to the end of September, while the berry season runs from March to November, peaking in June. And they don’t tend to like working, or need to work, in fields either.

Robots are not yet practical for the key tasks of crop picking and husbandry. Farms are very different to factories and these tasks are very demanding on vision systems, robotic arms and hands, and most of all on Artificial Intelligence as the task itself is almost infinitely variable. This technology is I think at least 10 years from being widely available on farms. The Andersons report looked at the jobs that could be automated now, and concluded that with investment the industry could replace five per cent of manual labour with machines by 2020. Demand grows by more than that every year.

As I see it, the solutions lie in clarity in rights of current EU citizens already here, and a time limited permit scheme for seasonal workers in place by 2018.

A robust and effective seasonal workers permit scheme put in place promptly is the critical issue – farms are already short of people by between 10 and 30 per cent, and committed returnees for next year are around 35 cent compared to a past level of 65 per cent. This spells major issues for 2018, and if not attended to, disaster by 2019.

The scheme needs to allow entry to workers from outside the EEA, as this region itself is already short of available labour for seasonal work. Many countries including Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal and even Poland (all of whom are staying in the EU) have non-EU worker permit schemes for seasonal staff from all over – Ukraine, Moldova, South America, even Thailand – in recognition of the crucial need their horticultural businesses have for seasonal staff.

Without this scheme, there won’t be much of a UK berry industry left. We’ll see 30 to 50 per cent inflation in retail prices from May to October, according to the Andersons report, as the UK industry is currently competitive at ex-farm cost on a global scale, and logistics costs on berries are high if freighted over distance. Thus we will see large-scale contraction of berry consumption in the UK with all the consequences that will have on the nation’s health.

It seems a shame to even have to state this when the Home Office keeps saying a seasonal permit scheme could be put in place quickly and easily. They just haven’t told anyone when and how they are going to do it. Yet.