BITTER HARVEST
On a single farm this summer, 220 tons of strawberries and raspberries wait to be picked. Except no British jobseeker wants the work – even though it can pay £190 a day. The reason? Benefits are more lucrative, says the farmer. So tons of fruit will be left to rot in its polytunnels during a heartbreakingly...
AS he looks out over the rows of polytunnels in his fields, David Stephen feels both pride and dread.
Yes, it has been a very good year for growing fruit: after a late burst of warm summer weather, he reckons he could harvest 50 tons of raspberries and 170 tons of strawberries by the end of the season.
But there is a problem, one which is causing him, and dozens of other farmers across the country, deep concern: unless he can find more staff to pick the berries – and soon – literally tons of his produce will be left to rot.
Like everyone else in the multimillion-pound Scottish fruit industry, Mr Stephen’s business is being crippled by a severe shortage of pickers.
The father of four, whose family has owned Redhouse Farms, in Aberdeenshire, for 20 years, knows it is not because the work is demeaning or poorly paid. On a good day, a fast worker can earn up to £190 a shift.
But still he struggles to find workers, he claims, partly because immigration rules make it hard to recruit staff from overseas, partly because the benefits system is so generous that it discourages Scots from hard graft such as berry-picking.
Mr Stephen, who has 20 acres of farmland dedicated to growing soft fruits, has repeatedly tried to recruit local workers. Yet out of the 50 pickers on his fields, not one of them is Scottish or British.
Last night, Mr Stephen issued a stark warning that, without urgent change, one of the country’s most longestablished rural industries will collapse.
Speaking candidly to the Scottish Mail on Sunday, he said: ‘I grow so much beautiful fruit, but so much of it is going to go off unless I find more staff.
‘I pay well, and I treat my staff well, but there are just not enough people wanting to work.
‘We have even tried to bring in staff from cities like Dundee and Glasgow through the Princes Trust, and it hasn’t worked. It has never worked.
‘The benefits system makes it undesirable to work here. On top of this, we are not allowed [to have] non-EU workers come and work for the season, and this is where the real problem lies.
‘We need a seasonal workers scheme, like other EU countries have – and we need it now. There is an urgency here – it will be the demise of the UK fruit industry if we are not allowed labour.’
Soft fruit production in Scotland is estimated to be worth around £128 million, and employs more than 5,000 people.
Yet figures show that only one in every 400 seasonal workers in the Scottish industry is British.
Up until 2015, Mr Stephen had to turn workers
‘The benefits system makes it undesirable’
away because there was so much appetite for fruit picking. Now his staff is made up of around 35 Polish workers, six Syrians – who were granted refuge in Inverurie two years ago – and ten Romanians, who were seconded from a neighbouring farm. Mr Stephen said: ‘We have tried very hard to employ people from the UK. But regardless of what politicians say, the workers are simply not there. As such, we have been reliant on people from Poland, ever since 2003. But Poland is becoming more prosperous, and we have a weakening currency, so fewer people are coming here. ‘So now we need people outside the EU to help fill in the gaps. Every other country has a seasonal workers scheme except the UK, but we don’t.
‘This is a problem that has to be addressed – and it has to be addressed this year.’
Mr Stephen pays his workers a minimum of £7.83 per hour – the living wage in Scotland – as well as holiday pay.
But those who pick the fastest can earn anything up to £16 an hour.
Last week Polish-born Erita Uchman, 22, revealed she had just earned £190 in a single day. She said: ‘It is possible to earn a lot here, if you work hard. I like this job and it is not so difficult.
‘Sometimes I am tired of course, but I can earn a lot of money doing what I do well.
‘I want to earn money and I am grateful for any extra work, and the overtime makes it very worthwhile.’
Even those who are not as fast as Miss Uchman make a considerable amount more than if they were working in Poland.
Jacob Charski, 20, a language student, said: ‘This was my first job abroad, and I was quite afraid. But it is good and I try very hard. Of course, if I work more than eight to ten hours I get tired but I get used to it. I am here to work so I won’t complain. I make four times more here than at home.’
A different piece rate is set every day depending on how abundant the fruit is and on the weight of the punnets being requested by supermarkets. But because there are so few staff, workers are being asked to work for longer hours to ensure as little fruit as possible rots.
Father-of-three Woytek Pietrzykv, 50, who has been working on the farm for two months, said: ‘There are not enough pickers and so it is hard for me, because the hours are much longer.
‘It can be very tiring. But I will take the work – and we get overtime if we go over eight hours.
‘I have a farming business and a bakery in Poland, and I have plenty of money for myself, but I want to build a house for one of my daughters and her children, and this work will allow me to do that.
‘Every job needs to be done – nobody gives you money for free. So I am doing it and I am very happy to do it.’
Crippling staff shortages are a growing problem, with some farmers even offering free flights to workers from Bulgaria and Romania to ensure they have enough.
William Houston, general manager of Angus Growers – a trade body representing soft fruit producers across Scotland – said the only way to solve the problem is to allow non-EU workers seasonal employment in Scotland. Last night, he said: ‘We are all just scraping by right now, and we still don’t know if we can make it until the end of the season.
‘We are trying to be optimistic – but if you don’t have people, then fruit can’t be picked and will be left rotting.
‘We have researched and advised and written to the Government to warn of the problem – we knew it was coming long ago – but they don’t understand it and are still not acting. It will soon be too late.’
He added: ‘We are facing all sorts of problems with diet in Scotland and we are growing the healthiest foods. But you can’t expect farmers to carry on who are losing so much fruit.’
Although Scotland’s delicious strawberries and raspberries have long had pride of place in the national larder, Mr Houston warned: ‘If things don’t change there might come a day when Scotland has to import soft fruits. It will be too late.’