Furloughed? Try fruit picking

Clarification from HMRC this week that furloughed employees will be able to take up alternative temporary work should act as a further incentive to those wishing to help harvest Scotland’s soft fruit and vegetable crops and earn additional cash, it has been claimed.

NFU Scotland said that with the fruit picking season to start soon, peaking in high summer ahead of vegetable harvesting in the autumn, around 10,000 pickers were required in Scotland alone, with close to 80,000 required across the UK.

But due to the global nature of the coronavirus pandemic, growers across Scotland remain concerned that it will be extremely difficult to recruit sufficient workers to carry out all the necessary seasonal horticultural work.

And yesterday NFU Scotland took the opportunity to continue promote its recruitment service to anyone out of work or on furlough to take up work in the countryside which they said would help in the national response to Covid-19.

The union also urged the UK government to engage with all other available options to fill the projected worker shortfalls. The union’s horticultural committee chairman, James Porter said that despite the domestic recruitment initiative, it remained extremely unlikely that there would be sufficient workers during the high seasons:

“NFU Scotland is calling upon the UK government to ensure its participation in the EU Commission’s guidelines which ensure the exchange of seasonal agricultural workers between member states so that critical harvesting, planting and tending can be carried out,” said Porter.