A recently government report warned that labor shortages “caused by Brexit and exacerbated by the pandemic” are severely affecting our food and farming sectors, as fruit suppliers are often forced to let their produce rot in the fields.
A fruit farm in Suffolk is already feeling the pinch. When strawberries are ripe and ready, why aren’t there enough people to pick them?
Andrew Sturgeon owns Lindsey Lodge Farm near Hadleigh, Suffolk and says that from “late May to June we are very busy picking fruit”.
“We need pickers, the time you can expect someone to pick fruit is limited,” he says.
“We have 11 pickers now, but we’d like to get 15 or 16.”
He’s hoping he’ll “get some people in the next few weeks” as high school and college students become available.
“The constant struggle to balance supply and demand is probably the biggest concern, but you have to have the supply, you have to have the pickers to get into that worrying position,” he says.
“We had a system where if someone [from the EU] left our team, they would introduce a friend or relative to take their place. That’s no longer possible and that’s what caused the problems we see today.”
Last year the government issued 30,000 visas for seasonal workers but Mr Sturgeon said the “horticulture industry needs 80,000 or 90,000 workers”.
He says post-Brexit, people from the EU “would have made a choice to go home and these are the people we need to replace”.
“It used to be very easy to get pickers and now it’s not that easy,” he adds.
“We have already seen this spring that a large patch of asparagus in the Woodbridge area went unpicked. This is a big loss of income for the farmer and most likely meant we imported asparagus.”
Emmanuel Ciocanel from Romania has been working on the farm in Suffolk for 12 years.
He says he enjoys the work and “because I work with my family — my brother, my sister, my cousin — we always come back here and work.”
Mr. Ciocanel says he finds other temporary or seasonal work through an agency for the rest of the year and sometimes returns to Romania.
He believes there is a shortage of fruit pickers “because of Brexit”.
“I have some friends and relatives in Romania who would like to come but can’t because of the paperwork.”
Some of his friends have found seasonal work elsewhere due to the end of free movement and Britain’s exit from the EU, he says.
“You were in England [now] They go to Germany [because] They don’t know what will happen after Brexit.
“This year we have too few people, which will be more difficult for us,” he adds.
A government spokesman said he recognized that “the food and agriculture industries face labor law challenges and we continue to work with the sector to mitigate them”.
It said the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is looking at how it can “support the adoption of automation technologies and reduce horticulture’s reliance on seasonal migrant workers”.
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“We have given the sector more certainty by allowing the seasonal worker scheme until the end of 2024, which will allow foreign workers to come to the UK to work in the horticultural sector for up to six months,” the spokesman said.
Anna Morley is the only English picker on the farm and combines seasonal work with her degree. She is studying Animal Physiotherapy at Writtle College near Chelmsford, Essex.
“This is my third season, but my first harvest of strawberries – before I picked raspberries,” she says.
She is “definitely not” as fast as the other pickers, most of whom come from Romania, but she “is learning slowly”.
Ms Morley says the work on the farm is “pretty good” and she is a rarity as a British fruit picker.
“I live very locally, it’s easy and convenient, I wanted to work outside so it suits me well,” she adds.
Bogdan Iosub is the Irrigation Manager at Lindsey Lodge Farm and has been there since 2009.
He says “if I’m still here,” it means he enjoys the work.
“I like the system, I don’t like being stressed and it works better for me,” he says.
He originally came from Romania to work in Suffolk because “the wage rate was right and the system was right”.
“But now it is difficult for new people to come here. In Europe you can go anywhere and work anywhere,” he says.
Mr Iosub says that to work in the UK food sector, Romanians need fixed or pre-determined status – or a seasonal worker visa.
“People like to go where it’s easy, the pay is the same across the EU,” he says. “I have family in the Netherlands, it’s the same [conditions as the UK].
“How can I ask someone to come? [to the UK] if I don’t know the future? I don’t know what’s going to happen in two or three years.”
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