REPETITIVE STRAIN

Growers have been left waiting, and waiting, for a decision on visas for next year’s seasonal workforce and they’ve been bringing their fears and frustrations to the wider public

The frustration and anxiety growers have felt over sourcing labour during the past few years has been a topic of constant discussion, dominating the agenda for meetings of the NFU Horticulture and Potatoes Board and just about every other grower association.

The NFU and others have campaigned extensively at government level, particularly on the question of access to seasonal workers, but individual growers have, for the most part, kept calm and carried on as best they can.

That has now changed. The exasperation in some growers’ written submissions to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee’s ongoing parliamentary inquiry into labour in the food-supply chain is palpable, as exemplified by David Simmons, managing director of Cornish vegetable farm Riviera Produce.

“I cannot emphasis enough how important making the seasonal workers scheme permanent is for the horticultural industry in the UK,” he told the committee. “Without this scheme the horticultural industry in the UK is finished, it’s that serious.”

Growers are making the case in newspaper, radio and TV interviews, too. On BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours consumer programme, NFU Horticulture Board member Philip Pearson described how lack of labour had forced his company, APS Group, to scale back tomato production for next year. “There is such a huge volume being wasted it makes you want to cry,” he said.

What has also changed this year is growers are no longer alone. Due to a combination of factors including the new immigration regime and Covid, labour shortages have appeared in many other

sectors too, such as hospitality and haulage.

“It’s running right through the food-supply chain,” says NFU chief horticulture and potatoes adviser Lee Abbey. “They are now facing the challenges we’ve been talking about for years. It’s not just us anymore.”

During the summer, the NFU pulled together a ‘coalition’ of food-supply chain organisations to pool information on the extent and causes of their labour shortfall. The resulting report (see panel) has bolstered NFU negotiations with the government during the past few weeks to try to secure better access to labour for growers, including through a permanent seasonal workers scheme.

The report is supported by results from the latest NFU grower labour survey. The number of seasonal workers recruited up to the end of September fell short by 22% overall compared with what the industry needed. Almost one in 10 businesses looking for seasonal workers had failed to recruit any, while more than 40% were ‘significantly’ short.

EU citizens with settled or pre-settled status accounted for 58% of the seasonal workers recruited and a third came from the seasonal workers pilot.

Just 46 of the 12,368 seasonal workers employed by businesses responding to the survey came via the government’s

find-a-job scheme or job centres.

The dearth of labour has eaten into the profitability of almost two-thirds of the businesses surveyed. More than 40% reported crops were left unharvested, a loss valued at £13.7 million for the 71 growers able to make an estimate.

NFU Horticulture Board member Julian Marks, managing director at Hampshire-based vegetable producer Barfoots, says the business needs 1,200 or so seasonal workers across the year but has been 10-15% short ‘most of the time’.

“It was particularly tight early in the year due to the late announcement on

NFU Horticulture Board member the pilot scheme,” he recalls. “We ended up wasting a significant amount of crop that we had to harvest but didn’t have the labour to process. And even when the first pilot scheme workers arrived, we didn’t have enough, which restricted our ability to harvest and process. Courgettes were the worst hit: 600,000kg had to be dumped.

“If there had been no seasonal worker pilot this year it would have meant leaving 50% of our crops in the field. The scheme is critical to what we do, but being so short continually through the year has left us with no flexibility to react to changes in customer requirements or to growing conditions.”

He adds: “We attracted some seasonal workers who had finished in other sectors for the autumn, but it is going to get really difficult now in the run-up to Christmas, as most of the pilot scheme people will have gone.”

The NFU’s surveys and growers’ own experiences suggest the squeeze worsened as the season progressed. Some say it’s because the amount of overtime being worked by those who are here means they’ve earned what

they wanted sooner than planned, and then returned home.

Whatever the reason, that tailing-off in numbers has affected apple and pear, and winter vegetable growers particularly hard.

“Tree-fruit growers have been anything from 15% to 40% short of seasonals,” says NFU Horticulture Board chair Ali Capper, who also chairs top-fruit growers association British Apples and Pears. “Those at 15% will have just worked harder and operated more overtime. Those at 40% will have had some hard decisions on what to pick: some orchards may have had just one pick rather than follow-ups, so fruit will be left unharvested. We’ll be seeing the highest levels of waste ever.”

Soft fruit crop association British Summer Fruits (BSF) has seen another big drop in the number of experienced returnees. “On average, the workforce was 75% EU returnees in past years,” it told the Efra inquiry. “This year it fell to 45% and we expect similar falls in 2022 to probably around 30%, with further falls to zero in the following years.”

BSF blames the effect of the postBrexit immigration system on EU citizens, under which only those with settled or pre-settled status can return for seasonal work without a visa. From this year, anyone else has had to hold the seasonal workers pilot visa, the same as those from outside the EU – an unattractive proposition if they have to cover the cost, when they can work elsewhere in Europe unhindered.

“The settled status scheme is not and was never intended as a source of seasonal workers,” says BSF. “It is a route for EU nationals to settle in the UK and work full-time here.”

While returnee rates have dwindled for some years, poaching of workers is a new challenge, driven by the shortage.

“We have received reports of recruiters entering fields looking to poach staff to work in other sectors, notably hospitality,” British Growers Association chief executive Jack Ward told Efra.

“Competition for staff has led to something of a bidding frenzy as growers increased wage rates to hold on to people to enable them to meet retailer commitments.

“And while better rates of pay are clearly a benefit in attracting staff, the margins in fresh produce leave little room for manoeuvre.”

NFU board member Martin Emmett points out that the labour shortage has impacted growers of ornamentals just as much as fruit and vegetable growers, made worse for some because

A broad coalition of food-supply chain bodies, which the NFU helped to bring together, is calling, with one voice, for the seasonal workers scheme to be made permanent.

Representing businesses from farmers and growers to processors, packers, haulage, retail and food service, the coalition has produced a report on the impact of labour shortages across the supply chain, with a 12-month ‘Covid revovery visa’ among the leading asks.

This would enable businesses to fill some of the roles in most critical shortage, giving time to recruit and train UK residents to take over.

The coalition is also calling for an urgent review of the impacts ending free movement has had on food and drink production, and for the Migration Advisory Commission to look again at the shortage occupation list.

In the longer term, it wants a new package of measures to build on what businesses are already implementing in skills and training, including better incentives on apprenticeships.

ornamentals have, so far, been excluded from the seasonal workers pilot.

Shortages have averaged around 14% across the sector this year, with trees and bulb crops, the most seasonal in terms of labour requirements, hit worst.

Many bulb enterprises are part of mixed farms growing potatoes or vegetables as well. The fact they can’t move pilot scheme workers between crops makes labour management more difficult and costly across the whole farm.

“Ultimately, ornamentals businesses

Labour shortages and other issues affecting the food-supply chain are being investigated in an inquiry by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee of MPs.

At the end of October, its chairman, Neil Parish, wrote to the Prime Minister asking for ‘urgent action’ on visas for the industry.

Among those submitting written evidence were vegetable growers Riviera Produce and Staples, ornamentals young plant producer Kernock Park Plants, and several grower associations including British Summer Fruits. The NFU took part in the oral inquiry sessions.

Such has been the impact of this year’s labour shortages, it wasn’t only growers and their representatives who felt moved to respond.

Cornwall County Council also weighed in as ‘the largest rural unitary authority in England’, backing the NFU’s call for a permanent seasonal workers scheme. It highlighted the urgency for a decision, saying Defra secretary of state and Cornish MP George Eustice had already signalled his intent to extend the scheme in 2022, a commitment yet to be delivered.

“With crops in the ground awaiting harvest [this] winter, this represents a significant business risk,” the council says. “We are concerned that due to the lead times involved in securing staff for the 2021/22 autumn/winter season, any further delay will limit [growers’] ability to secure staff.

“If access to seasonal workers is restricted, the likelihood will be that cauliflower and cabbage will be imported from the EU to fulfil UK demand while UK-grown produce is left to rot.” are competing with edibles for the same pool of labour, so it’s important any future solution does not provide for other sectors at ornamentals’ expense,” he says.

If 2021’s recruitment woes were bad enough, the fear now is that 2022 will be even worse, with the industry well into planning its crops without any government announcement yet on what happens next.

“By the end of October, rent has already been paid on land but crops not yet agreed with customers,” says Julian Marks. “And, this year, growers have the extra risk that so far we have no labour to harvest. You just have to plough on in the good faith it will all come right.

“But there are growers looking to get out of certain vegetable crops or drop the area they grow. We’re making decisions about whether to reduce some of the more labour-intensive crops, as well as our overall acreage. And we’re looking at ways to further improve our offering to compete for workers, especially on accommodation.”

With the current pilot scheme operators already in receipt of requests for around 50,000 people for 2022, the NFU has been pressing Defra and the Home Office harder than ever for an urgent decision on the scheme’s future.

It’s calling for the pilot to be made permanent and expanded to include ornamentals; for the number of visas to be doubled at least, to 60,000, to meet known demand; and for more operators to handle the additional volume.

“The timing of decision-making is critical,” points out Mrs Capper. “At the point where we need to be recruiting for next year, we have no means to do so.

“It’s very hard to see how we can reach a solution given the rhetoric we have been hearing from government.

“Yes, we should be a high-wage, high-skill economy: I think we are already. But that does not detract from the labour needs of industries such as primary food production, construction and care. The economy depends on people being fed, housed and cared for.

“We’re not asking for ‘uncontrolled immigration’. We’re not even asking for a return to freedom of movement. We’re asking for a policy that enables our businesses to thrive through controlled temporary migration.

“Nor is it about wage rates. We already have some of the highest rates for this type of work in the world. Our employment costs have gone up 15% this year, and 30-40% in the past five.”

She adds: “Despite the end of furlough, we have not seen the rise in unemployment some had feared, and it’s particularly low in the areas where most of our industry is. The NFU has tried again and again to help growers recruit locally, including through the Department of Work and Pensions scheme this year. But it’s no good asking us to recruit from the UK if the people are just not there.” P