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Labor shortages on British farms have left tonnes of food unharvested, costing millions of pounds and pushing food inflation up to 20% on the farm doorstep, the farming industry has told Sky News.
Farmers say this year’s harvest has been affected by a shortfall in the total number of seasonal worker visas granted by the Home Office, delays in processing those visas and a collapse in the number of Ukrainian workers coming to the UK since the Russian invasion.
Last year, more than 60% of seasonal visa workers were from Ukraine and 8% from Russia. This number has decreased significantly because older Ukrainian men cannot leave the country.
Sky News also spoke to Russians who say their visa applications have been canceled without explanation by recruitment agencies, even though there is no explicit ban on Russians working in the UK.
Labor cuts have already left hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of crops in the ground by individual farmers and there are concerns about the industry’s ability to harvest a full crop in the current berry season and the upcoming apple and pear season.
Derek Wilkinson, managing director of Sandfield Farms, part of G’s fresh produce group, employs more than 150 foreign workers on his farm in Worcestershire.
He told Sky News that labor shortages, caused in part by delays in visa processing, had already cost around £250,000 of his crop of asparagus and spring onions grown in Worcestershire.
“If we don’t have the people, we just can’t harvest,” Mr Wilkinson said. “We’re trying to recruit locally and there just aren’t people out there. Brits just don’t want seasonal work, if you live in the UK you need permanent work. We’re trying to recruit, but we’re going to get very little uptake.”
Some visas were taking around six to seven weeks to process, “which is just ridiculous in my opinion”, Mr Wilkinson said. “I speak to manufacturers in Holland and Germany who do the same thing and can get a visa in a few days, so I’m not sure why it’s taking so long.”
“This meant that at the beginning of May we were 40% short of the people we should have had here. They were hired, but their visas just weren’t processed.”
As a result, the company lost 40 to 45,000 kilograms of asparagus worth around £150,000 and 750,000 bunches of spring onions worth around £100,000, Mr Wilkinson said.
The seasonal workforce in the UK has been declining since 2018 and the introduction of the seasonal worker visa regime after Brexit.
It is one of the only routes for low-skilled and low-paid workers to enter the UK from abroad. Previously, most seasonal workers came from the European Union without restrictions.
In 2021, around 30,000 seasonal worker visas were granted. An additional 10,000 was allocated this year, 8,000 of which went to horticulture and 2,000 to alleviate production problems in poultry.
The government plans to reduce the number of visas available for seasonal workers next year before phasing them out completely in 2024, with domestic workers and automation, including fruit-picking robots, filling the gap.
The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has warned the plan is unrealistic and risks shrinking the horticulture sector just as the government is proposing expansion as part of its recently published food strategy.
Tom Bradshaw, vice-president of the NFU, said: “We have a very low unemployment rate, we have 4% unemployed and millions of vacancies, so it is unrealistic for them to be provided by the domestic workforce when there are many permanent roles.”
“The Migration Advisory Committee found that seasonal gardening is unique and we need to embrace that,” Mr Bradshaw said. “We need to look at the sector to allow it to grow and deliver fresh British food and vegetables to our consumers, it’s a wonderful success story, it’s something we can do really well with our climate, but at the moment we feel , that our hands are tied behind our backs.”
Sir Robert Goodwill, the Conservative chairman of the environment, food and rural affairs committee, told Sky News that the seasonal worker scheme should remain because uncertainty about labor supply could deter investment.
“We want this to be a permanent scheme. If you’re planting a vineyard or building a warehouse, you need to make sure you have the labor to come and do that work in the future. The scheme has been very successful and there is no reason why they should not continue to do it.”
Despite high demand in the UK, Russian applicants are finding it difficult to obtain visas. Ilshat Nizamev, from the southern city of Ufa, told Sky News that his visa was canceled without explanation by a recruitment agency.
“I wanted to come but my visa was canceled and I heard that 500 Russian visas were canceled just like me, so what can I do?” he said.
“Our company sent us a long email saying that we are sorry for this information, we support the Russians, we support the people of Ukraine, but this year is difficult, we have never had this experience, we have never had so many people, who can’t get a visa, we can’t do anything for you.”
The Home Office denied visas were delayed, insisting it was processing applications within the eight-week “service standard”, but visas for Ukrainian refugees admitted were a priority.
“We process ordinary seasonal worker visa applications within our service standard and it is incorrect to suggest that there are delays in issuing these visas,” a spokesman said.
The easy access to seasonal labor that the UK enjoys as a member of the European Union, especially since the accession of 10 mainly Eastern European countries in 2004, has to some extent shaped agriculture.
The availability of workers made labor-intensive crops such as berries more viable and there was tremendous growth in this market. The British Berry Growers Association says the expansion is already in doubt, with the 2021 crop worth more than £36m destroyed because it cannot be harvested.
Madeleine Sumption, director of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, which studies international migration and policy, says tightening labor can change cultures.
“In the longer term, if there are fewer workers, we can expect the UK to return to a position somewhat closer to where it was in the early 2000s, when we weren’t producing as much labour-intensive output,” said she.
“In the short term, this could be quite disruptive to farmers who have built a business model that relies on having a significant number of seasonal workers.”
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