Fruit rots for lack of suitable pickers

3:30pm Thursday 28th August 2008

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LEDBURY strawberry farmer Angus Davison said that fruit rotted unpicked in fields this summer, because some of the foreign workers he employed were not quick enough.

This year the Government scrapped the long-standing Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme, and farmers such as Mr Davison of Haygrove Fruit Farm can no longer give priority to fit young students from outside the EU economic block.

Instead, under new restrictions, fruit farmers must give priority to applicants from the EU, whether or not they are students and regardless of age.

Mr Davison said: “We had a very poor July, due to the quality of some of the people we employed.”

He said that the age of pickers had risen and, last month, 70 out of eighty new pickers at Haygrove had either decided to leave the farm after just ten days or had been asked to leave.

Around 30 per cent of his crop was not picked.

Mr Davison said he had lost “an awful lot of money” as a result but declined to say how much.

He added: “It’s hard to put a value on something you have not had.”

Ledbury’s MP Bill Wiggin, the Shadow Minister for Agriculture, said the Conservative Party would review the scrapping of the Seasonal Agriculture Workers Scheme.

A revived scheme, in some form, could allow fruit farmers to once again source young students from outside the EU, such as Russia.

Mr Wiggin said: “We recognise the difficulties that the closing of the scheme has caused.”