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The war in Ukraine has caused a labour crunch on Britain’s farms

Ukrainian seasonal workers pick much of Britain’s fruit. This year they are staying away

Strawberries and cream are the quintessential taste of the British summer. But getting British fruit to market depends on foreign labour. In recent years many of the migrants who came to Britain to pick strawberries and other crops were from Ukraine and Russia. This year, most will stay away.

Just over 60% of all the food eaten in Britain is produced on British farms. Nearly all of the berries eaten between May and October are home-grown. Picking fruit by hand is low-paid, seasonal and backbreaking work that few Britons want to do. So farmers rely on imported labour to harvest their crops. After 1945 foreign workers, mostly students, were issued visas under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS). When Britain was part of the European Union, freedom of movement meant that most pickers came from within the bloc. In 2008 the scheme was restricted to Bulgarians and Romanians and then suspended in 2014 when they were granted the right to work without a visa. In 2019, as Britain prepared to leave the EU, the government launched a scheme to issue visas to temporary workers in the horticultural sector, opening the industry to non-EU citizens. Of roughly 30,000 visas issued to workers to reap the 2021 harvest, 67% went to Ukrainians and 8% to Russians.

Four firms are licensed to recruit foreign workers for British farms. One of them, AG Recruitment, planned this year to allocate half of its allotted 7,500 visas to Ukrainians, and one-third to Russians. But since the Russian invasion most Ukrainian men have been forbidden to leave the country. British visa-application centres in Ukraine also closed, stopping women from applying for seasonal-worker visas. Ukrainians already in Britain on temporary-work visas have had them extended to the end of the year, and some have taken up spring and summer jobs on farms. Others, though, have returned home to fight. Meanwhile Britain has banned flights from Russia, and is delaying the visa applications of Russian nationals. AG Recruitment says it is not recruiting Russians this year.

To replace Ukrainian and Russian workers, recruiters have turned again to Bulgarians and Romanians as well as Macedonians and workers from central Asia. Yet they are struggling to meet their quotas: AG Recruitment still needs 1,000 workers for June. And many of this season’s crop of pickers are first-timers who need training. British Summer Fruits, an industry lobbyist, estimates that newcomers are 30% less productive than returnees.

A shortage of pickers means fruit is left to rot in fields. Nearly 8,000 tonnes of berries, worth £36.5m ($50.2m), were wasted in 2021. The minimum wage paid to fruit-pickers rose in April, and other production costs are rising, too. Faced with empty shelves or expensive punnets, Brits might spare a thought for those prevented from filling them.

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