The Agricultural Wages Board announced this week that overall agricultural wages will rise by twice as much as inflation from October 1, although the rates for manual harvesting will remain in line with the national minimum wage.
“From the horticulture point of view, we are relatively pleased that the manual harvesting rate has been maintained as there were some challenges to that, but it will remain at £4.88 an hour in line with the national minimum wage,” said Graham Ward, chairman of the National Farmers’ Union’s horticulture board. However, other workers who work for more than three months will benefit from the 5.1 per cent rise.
“In reality it will cost those of us in horticulture money,” said Ward. “The biggest problem is that our prices are stable because of competition among retailers so to accommodate a hike in our main cost - labour - it’s quite significant and it hurts.”
Robert Balicki of the Northcourt Group, the largest supplier of UK top fruit, describes the AWB as an anachronism. “It is no longer necessary,” he said. “We have a national minimum wage now. If there needs to be a board, then it should be a horticultural wages board that fully understands the effect on horticultural prices.”
Labour costs form a considerably higher proportion of total costs in horticulture than in other sectors of agriculture that are less labour-intensive such as arable. The AWB is the last industry-specific wages board, the rest were abolished in the 1980s.
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