Scottish soft-fruit growers are calling for an end to the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) as they fight to gain parity after huge losses.
High winds ripped through polytunnel production this month and growers have employed considerable amounts of labour to repair the damage.
Meg Marshall of Peter Marshall & Co, a member of the Angus Growers which has suffered 20 acres of damage, told FPJ: “It’s a really difficult situation. We have massive labour costs after the storm damage, the prices are rubbish this year and the early fruit is really expensive to grow. The market has been flooded and prices are where they normally are mid-season.”
The AWB is likely to be scrapped in England in the long term - a situation growers north of the border would like to mirror.
Marshall said: “[Scottish first minister] Alex Salmond is determined to keep it and we are already paying 3p more than the minimum wage an hour. We also have to pay time and a half after eight hours work in a day or 39 in a week and we are just not getting enough returns to justify employing these people for six weeks as it’s a huge hassle.”
In a letter to SNP MP for Perth and North Perthshire, Pete Wishart, Angus Growers general manager William Houstoun said: “The cost of producing keeps increasing but the returns are static. In fact this week we got less for our fruit than in 2006. The reality is that the industry is verging on the unsustainable, and Scottish growers should not be singled out for unnecessary extra bureaucracy and cost from SAWB - an unnecessary quango.”
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