Calls for ‘land army’ prove a success
Concerns were raised over labour shortfall
RURAL: Calls for a “land army” to help bring in the harvest have been answered by Yorkshire workers who have inundated producers with applications to pick fruit and vegetables.
It has been has been welcomed by the region’s leading farming organisation, which said it was “encouraging” to hear of a positive response to the appeal.
CALLS FOR a “land army” to help bring in the harvest have been answered by Yorkshire workers who have inundated producers with applications to pick fruit and vegetables.
It is a move which has been welcomed by the region’s leading farming organisation which said it was “encouraging” to hear of people responding positively to the appeal.
With overseas workers unable to travel due to coronavirus restrictions, concerns were raised about the potential shortfall in labour to bring in crops as the warmer months approached.
A national rallying call for people to “Pick for Britain” was recently issued by the Government, with the Prince of Wales adding his voice to the campaign.
But while there is still a national need for pickers, two Yorkshire producers said they have filled their teams with some to spare.
Janet Oldroyd-Hulme, whose family farm Oldroyd & Sons in Rothwell, Leeds, which grows forced rhubarb early in the year and strawberries during the summer months, said they had needed around a dozen pickers for the soft fruit harvest which was due to start in June.
“A lot of our overseas workforce stayed on after the rhubarb season finished so they were already on-site when the restrictions came in,” she said.
“We usually have a workforce of between 40 and 50 and we needed to find around 10 or 12 pickers to make up the numbers.”
Mrs Oldroyd-Hulme said they had more than 600 applications for the 12 vacancies.
“The response has been incredible. We have even had people offering to work for nothing to help,” she said.
“I’d love to take on more people but we are not a massive fruit farm and can’t take everybody, as much as we would like to.”
Mrs Oldroyd-Hulme said they had received applications from people around Yorkshire but had recruited people who live locally due to the demands of the job.
“We start very early due to the heat,” she explained. “Our strawberries are in tunnels and our workers start at around 5am. As they would normally be on-site, it is a walk over to the tunnels but it would make it a very early start for anyone who had a commute.”
Olivia Spilman at Spilmans Farms in Sessay near Thirsk said she had a similar experience recruiting pickers for asparagus and soft fruits. The family-run enterprise had seen lockdown restrictions start to come in as the harvest for their earlier asparagus crop got underway.
“We had to react very quickly to try and find a picking team for the asparagus which is much smaller than the team we would then need for strawberry season,” Mrs Spilman said.
Determined to be proactive the business turned to Facebook as a recruitment tool. Local people, and some from further away, rose to the challenge and the asparagus harvest has gone ahead as normal.
Due to the earlier crop, they too had a small workforce who would stay on for the soft fruit but needed to recruit 50 additional pickers.
“We had around 1,000 people contacting us,” she said. “We were hugely humbled by it and although we can’t manage to respond to everyone we would like to thank those who got in touch.”
Mrs Spilman said she now has teams ready to go, adding: “It is really hard graft and not glamorous but people have stepped up and we are very grateful.”
Nigel Pulling, CEO of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, said: “It’s encouraging to hear of examples where farming businesses have enjoyed a great response to appeals for workers to come forward at their time of need. Without access to overseas labour markets, there was real concern for affected businesses that produce would rot in the ground.
“Where new recruits have been drafted in, they have helped to prevent quality British produce from going to waste. However, this continues to be a nationwide situation and we would urge anyone who is interested in seasonal work on British farms to visit the Pick for Britain website.”
People have stepped up and we are very grateful. Olivia Spilman at Spilmans Farms in Sessay near Thirsk.
THE GOVERNMENT has been warned it is taking risks by relaxing lockdown measures while the number of recorded cases of coronavirus poses a significant threat of a second spike in the disease.
Professor John Edmunds, who attends meetings of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) supporting the Government, said many experts would “prefer” to see the number of Covid-19 infections drop before measures such as a relaxation on social interaction restrictions were introduced.
Latest data from the Office for National Statistics suggests there are an estimated 54,000 new coronavirus infections a week in England outside of hospital and care settings, equating to nearly 8,000 cases per day.
The so-called R value, or reproduction rate, is currently between 0.7 and 0.9, and must remain under one to avoid a rise in infections – a key test on whether lockdown measures should be eased, with the Government stressing the need to avoid a second wave
With relatively high incidents... we are taking some risk here.
Prof John Edmunds, who attends meetings of Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.
of cases which would threaten to overwhelm the NHS.
Prof Edmunds, speaking during a Science Media Centre briefing yesterday, said the decision to relax certain rules came with a degree of risk.
He said: “I think many of us would prefer to see the incidence driven down to lower levels because that would mean we have fewer cases occurring before we relaxed the measures.
“If we had incidents at a lower level, even if the reproduction level went up a bit, we wouldn’t be in a position where we were overwhelming the health service.
“I think at the moment with relatively high incidents, relaxing the measures and with an untested track and trace system, I think we are taking some risk here.
“Even if that risk doesn’t play out and we keep the incidents flat, we’re keeping it flat at quite a high level.”
Official figures from the Government released yesterday have shown that a further 377 deaths were recorded of people who had tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the UK total to 37,837.
In Yorkshire, 2,484 people have died, and this figure rose by 18 yesterday.
The Government has launched its track and trace system designed to limit the spread of infection by ordering contacts of those who become infected with coronavirus to isolate.
Prof Edmunds, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, supported the decision to essentially substitute a “blanket approach” to containing the virus with a targeted one, adding that it saw a return to “some level of normality”.
He stressed that there was a need to try and get the economy restarted, to get people back to work and to provide a boost to people’s mental health.
But he also said that even if the track and trace system kept the R value at about one, it would still result in as many as 8,000 community infections a day in England.