STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
Louise Gray meets the people behind Scottish strawbs
Think about the best Scottish strawberry you ever tasted. I bet it was in June or July, when the sun was shining. Perhaps you were on the beach or enjoying a barbecue or watching the tennis? All over the world people see Scottish strawberries as the best. At Wimbledon it is not English strawberries that are consumed in vast quantities, but Scottish strawberries, which have a much better flavour relatively late in the season. Part of the joy of eating these strawberries is the image of the country idyll where the fruit is naturally grown on a bed of straw and the knowledge that the season will not last.
But of course both of these ideas are myths. Scottish strawberries are grown in coconut fibre under acres of polytunnels and the seasons are no longer relevant.
Scottish strawberries now last from May through to September. If you include strawberries grown in English glass houses, this extends from April to November. And if you import from Spain, Egypt, Israel and Morocco you can have strawberries all year round.
The Scottish strawberry industry may have a sentimental image at its heart but the reality is perhaps an even more wonderful feat of technology and people power. Every year around 30,000 tonnes of strawberries are grown on 1,000 hectares, mostly under polytunnels.
Lochy Porter, founder of Angus Soft Fruits, the third biggest supplier of strawberries in the UK, is one of the key figures in the growth of the industry. With his partners he realised the potential in cross-breeding traditional Scottish strawberries that hibernate over winter and only fruit over four weeks in July, with the Mediterranean species that fruit as long as the sun is shining.
This maverick idea bred varieties that would keep producing fruit in the right conditions, but had the quintessential taste of the Scottish strawberry. At the same time polytunnels allowed the right conditions in Scotland to grow strawberries for a much longer season.
The invention of the ‘Seaton System’, which grows strawberries in a substrate such as coconut fibre on tables, also allowed for the fruit to be drip irrigated throughout the day and for exactly the right amount of nutrients to be administered.
The long daylight hours and cool nights allowed a superior flavour to be built up slowly. As a result, the Scottish strawberry industry has exploded over the past 20 years and has gained an international reputation. As the industry has grown, it has relied on a pool of labour from Eastern Europe.
70% of the cost of growing strawberries is paying pickers
Some 70% of the cost of growing strawberries is paying pickers the minimum wage as well as National Insurance and overtime. At the height of the season Angus Soft Fruits alone can have up to 800 people picking fruit. It is hot, dusty work that starts at 4am and may not finish until 4pm. The fruit must be picked without bruising and then packaged and transported without any blemishes.
On a morning in late June, I visited Angus Soft Fruits to meet the people behind this success story. It is 7am but the staff have already been hard at work for three hours. In every aisle men and women, from their 60s down to their 20s, methodically fill trollies with ripe fruit. In the past most of the pickers came from Poland, Latvia or Lithuania and were young students.
Today, with demand for horticultural work all over Europe increasing, workers often also come from rural villages in Romania and Bulgaria and the age group has widened.
Very few of the pickers speak English , though all are courteous and polite, inviting me to share coffee during a break and writing down their names, which are difficult for an English speaker to pronounce.
Around half the workers live in static caravans on the farm, with six people squeezed into three rooms. They are small and basic but the two I look inside are clean and the residents say they are comfortable. In the nearby town of Arbroath there are few reports of tension with locals and in fact the seasonal workers are generally welcomed as part of the community.
Are they worried about Brexit? A few nod their heads. It will be more difficult to get jobs in the UK if it is no longer part of Europe and the free movement of people. But the person most worried about Brexit is Allen Innes, the farm manager at Angus Soft Fruits. His job and the health of the whole industry relies on a seasonal workforce.
‘The migrant workers can find jobs elsewhere, but what will I do?’ he says. He emphasises that local Scots do work in the business but the industry relies on seasonal workers. Even if all 1,500 people registered unemployed in Angus started picking strawberries tomorrow, it would hardly replace the 8,000 seasonal workers the industry needs in that county alone.
It is a matter of extreme frustration for hard-working farmers all over Scotland that the UK Government will not commit to such a key aspect of a vital industry as part of the Brexit negotiations, especially when it is so simple.
All it needs is a seasonal workers permit scheme for EU and non-EU migrants similar to what the UK had in the past, and to what many other countries within and without the EU use.
Already Scotland has been suffering shortages and there is fear for the future. Robots may be able to share some of the burden but for now your Scottish strawberries rely on migrant labour.
So, next time you eat a Scottish strawberry, remember it is not just memories of summer that make it taste so delicious, it is technology and innovation and the hard work of people like Remiziye, Myumyun, Atushe, Angel, Bozhidar, Irina, Setso, Catalin, Lyuben, Ivan, Alia and Gyuten who picked it.