Harvest crisis looms
A lack of specialist agricultural machine operators has contractors and farmers worried as the harvesting season approaches.
Hundreds of Irish and British specialist workers who come to New Zealand each year to harvest crops, cut grass, bale hay and more may not be able to get here unless they gain an exemption from border restrictions.
Founder of D Thompson Contracting, Darryl Thompson, said he would normally be heading to Ireland now to do interviews for workers who would arrive around September or October for six-to-eight months of work.
‘‘That’s what is keeping me awake at night. Who’s going to drive our three loaders on silage stacks,’’ said Thompson.
He had nearly 50 agricultural machines that went out each day, and employed around 20 fulltime staff. He had a few farmer friends who could jump in if needed but he said he was short 10 to 15 operators.
Machine operation was highly skilled and workers needed several years of training to do it to a high standard.
Contracts varied between businesses, but machine operators earned between $22 and $32 an hour, depending on experience. Those coming from overseas would generally start at about $26 an hour, Kean said.
‘‘You’ve got to have spent two to three years operating machinery, using loaders and other different things, loading muck spreaders, before you start heading towards a 3-metre stack of grass in the middle of a paddock.
‘‘You’ve got to have a very, very good feel for that machine because it can turn ugly very quickly,’’ Thompson said.
Most employers were taking on Kiwis and training them every year but it didn’t pay off immediately, Rural Contractors New Zealand president David Kean said.
Rural Contractors is a member-based organisation representing agricultural contractor businesses. Part of its remit is to get approval to import skilled machinery operators.
Rural contractors were keen to take on Kiwis and train them up but still needed foreign workers, he said.
‘‘We’ve got to make it clear to the Government that we are not doing this just for the sake of it, this is livelihoods at stake here,’’ Kean said.
For Thompson, whose clients were largely dairy farmers, the machine operators were needed to harvest grass for baling or silage.
Unless these workers were given an exemption, Thompson didn’t know what he would do.
‘‘A lot of other contractors will be in the same boat. There are going to be a lot of farmers and dairy farmers that will get extremely upset because things that need to be done aren’t able to be done,’’ he said.
He had about 200 clients his workers performed a number of task for each year, he said.
‘‘The Irish, they have diesel in their veins and learn it at a very young age. We try to take Kiwis on but there aren’t enough qualified people to fill the roles,’’ Thompson said.
Kean said contractors were important in farming because most farmers couldn’t afford to buy machinery only to have it sit unused for most of the year. Many machine operators travelled the world working different seasons in different countries.