New SAWS scheme to be trialed

A new scheme to enable migrants to work in UK agriculture in the picking season after Brexit has long been awaited, but is now about to be announced.

It appears that Downing Street was blocking the scheme. Why this should be the case is not clear, but Theresa May has taken a hard line on migration issues, evidenced by her insistence that students should count as immigrants.

In any event, Home Secretary Savid Javid and Defra Secretary of State Michael Gove have been able to push the scheme through.

It will be a trial scheme for two years and will cover 2,500 workers which is a small number given that 75,000 seasonal workers are estimated to have been employed in 2016. The current shortfall is about 7,000.

The scheme would be for those from outside the EU and the regulations that would apply to temporary EU migrants remain to be resolved. Countries that might supply workers under the trial scheme could include Ukraine and Morocco. However, Germany has offered 60,000 visas to workers from the Ukraine.

Under the old SAWS scheme, which ran from 1945 to 2013, farmers could employ overseas workers for up to six months to pick fruit and vegetables. Workers were recruited and vetted by four authorised agencies (the pilot scheme will be run by two yet to be selected).

Farmers and growers have been dealing with significant shortages of labour, reflected in the Radio 4 fictional serial, The Archers. The weakening of the pound and the buoyancy of economies elsewhere in Europe has slowed the number of workers arriving.

One of England's biggest fruit growers, Hall Hunter Partnership, have tried an innovative approach on their seven sites. They have tried to improve workers' productivity to enable pay to rise. As a result, more than 70 per cent of the pickers they hire are returning to the UK each year, well above the sector average of 40 per cent.

The proposal has been broadly welcomed by the NFU who see it as a success for their lobbying.

Read more about the proposal in this report from Farmers Weekly: Visa scheme

Fruit and vegetable production should get post Brexit boost

The Landworkers' Alliance has issued a report arguing that fruit and vegetable production should be boosted after Brexit: New deal for horticulture

It argues that directing more of the budget towards fruit and vegetables will deliver much of what Mr Gove wants in terms of health and sustainability.

However, it is already difficult to secure labour to pick such crops. Google searches by Romanian, Bulgarian and Polish citizens looking for agricultural jobs in the UK dropped by 34 per cent in the past year, according to a study by GK Strategy and OneFourZero.

The fall in interest from overseas has not been matched by an increase in searches from UK workers for UK farm jobs. Bulgaria saw the largest drop, with 2,000 fewer searches for UK jobs in January 2017 compared with the same time the year before.

The two companies said Google search data was a good early indicator of changing behaviour patterns because people increasingly looked online for job vacancies.

The UK agricultural sector already has a 29 per cent shortfall in seasonal workers. The Government has so far failed to introduce any kind of special scheme.

Can new technology solve labour shortages in farming?

There is considerable interest in the potential of new technology for making farming more productive and less reliant on difficult to obtain labour. I think that the development and application of these technologies should form a key part of a domestic agricultural policy post Brexit, but no one should pretend that they offer a quick, readily available and affordable fix.

Big farms already use semi-autonomous satellite-guided tractors and combines, which can drive in straight lines without overlapping. However, these big machines also tend to compact the soil, affecting its long-term viability and plant growth.

Harper Adams University, using government funding from Innovate UK, have adopted machinery to drill, spray and harvest crops autonomously using open source software, cameras, lasers and sensors. They used drones and scout vehicles to monitor the field and collect data by bringing back soils and crop samples.

The first crop is slightly wobbly where the tractor failed to keep to its line. The first hands free crop is expected to yield only 4.5 tonnes per hectare, compared with 6.8 tonnes using conventional methods.

In the horticulture sector, where labour problems are particularly acute, machines to pick strawberries and apples are being deployed, but they pick at only one third of the rate of a human and miss 15 per cent of the crop. Moreover, the machines can cost something approaching £200,000. Most farmers reckon that their large scale deployment is at least a decade off.

However, it is clear that one narrative that is being put forward (see Matt Ridley in The Times today is that access to cheap labour has held back the introduction of new technology in British farming.

The deputy president of the NFU has told a meeting at the Liberal Democrat conference that future growth in agriculture will be driven by overseas labour. There was no sign of government action on labour and trade issues: Lack of action

Seasonal worker shortage hits home

Even before Brexit, a shortage of seasonal workers is hitting fruit and vegetable growers. A survey by the NFU found that almost half the companies supplying agricultural labour were unable to meet the horticultural sector's demands between July and September. The supply pf pickers for late season crops was only able to meet 67 per cent of the industry's needs. This marked a sharp deterioration from the start of the year when none of the labour providers reported problems finding workers.

Leading provider HOPs Labour Solutions said that two years ago 40 per cent of seasonal workers planned to return to the UK. That number had fallen to 24 per cent.

There is a perception that Britain is a xenophobic place, while the devaluation of the pound has reduced net income by 15 to 20 per cent.

British horticulture relies on EU workers for more than 98 per cent of its seasonal workers. Defra secretary Andrea Leadsom has said that more British workers should be attracted into the sector, but they have proved unreliable in the past.

Concerns for horticulture

After being hit hard by the living wage which has eroded already thin profit margins, the horticulture industry is now coping with the consequences of Brexit.

Someone familiar with the sector said that growers were 'concerned that Brexit would mean another layer of bureaucracy being placed on top of existing compliance with EU regulations covering plant protection, and that companies would be less likely to get plant protection products authorized in the UK.'

'I can’t see the UK pulling out of [Regulation] 1107 or the Sustainable Use Directive. We would have to comply because of UK exports of cereals and seed potatoes, the press would have a field day (“British farmers to start using bee killing pesticides” etc.) and the retailers would probably insist that their growers comply with EU standards.'

For horticulture, there is already a concern that larger growers will shift their production to EU if they can’t get access to the eastern European labour force. Anything harvested by hand could switch to Poland and other eastern European countries and be sold back to the UK.