The solution to farm labour shortages? Get real

FARMERS are bad employers. Not in the sense that they are difficult or exploit employees — it’s more to do with their unrealistic expectations.

All the time I hear about the struggle to get ‘good lads’ to work on farms. I’ve been there myself. Every spring I need to get over 30 staff to pick daffodils.

All through the depths of the recession, when the country was burdened with unemploy- ment hitting 15pc, I received ONE call from an Irish person looking for a job.

This was despite the fact that I had a 26 acre field of daffodils blooming beside a road that over 20,000 cars drove past every day. It was effectively a 26 acre billboard that said ‘work available here’.

People queued up, but not to look for work — they were looking to take photographs.

Rather than agonise over the reality that Irish people have higher expectations than picking flowers all day for the minimum wage, I focused my search in Lithuania, Slovakia and Romania.

Almost all of my staff now hail from these regions.

Many have little or no English, but they make up for it by being willing workers. Most are from farms or farming areas and some know more about livestock and crops than I do myself.

About a year ago one of my sheep was on her side with severe bloat.

I initially thought that she was a goner in the sense that a sick sheep invariably ends up being a dead one.

But one of the Romanian lads — who hasn’t a word of English — gestured to me what looked like a suggestion to slit her neck.

After reassuring me that he wasn’t about to kill the sheep there and then, he produced a knife and cut a nick in the ewe’s ear.

I rolled my eyes at what I was sure was a hopeless Romanian ‘cure’.

But Ilie persisted, cupping some of the blood from the ewe’s ear and rubbing it into the sheep’s mouth.

Within minutes she was licking her lips, and suddenly struggling to stand again. Setting her upright, Ilie then made a small incision just under her nose.

Licking furiously, the blood seemed to act as some kind of internal anti-foamer, and she was as right as rain within the hour.

Ilie simply nodded at me with satisfaction and headed back to whatever job he had been previously doing.

I know farmers are frustrated that they can’t get skilled English-speaking help because the EU doesn’t rate agriculture as a sector with a skills shortage within the EU. I’m inclined to agree with the authorities on this one.

Out of a total population of 500 million, there must be a good 50 million people in countries such as Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania that have experience working on farms and would be only delighted with our basic rate of €9.25 per hour.

Bear in mind that even in Slovakia, which is considered one of the wealthier accession states in the EU, the typical wage for a farm labourer is rarely more than €400 per month.

Farmers counter that there’s no point in employing somebody that they cannot communicate with.

But go into any restaurant or deli in any city in the world, and you’ll hear a mix of accents and plenty of broken English. People adapt, and language skills develop.

Of course, there is the alternative route, which the dairy partnership that I’m involved in is about to embark on.

Invest in your facilities to make it more attractive to staff, regardless of where they are from.

Work on a brand new 54-unit