Foreign seasonal labour is vital to my farm

Sir, – I reply in response to the comments made by David Taylor, Fred Bruce and the Courier editorial “Local Workers Can Solve Berry Crisis” (July 27), that soft fruit farmers have abandoned local labour in favour of foreign workers, and should be making a greater effort to make the work appealing to local people to fill their demand for labour.

When my husband and I started growing soft fruit 24 years ago, we grew two acres of strawberries over a six week season and employed four full-time and approximately 20 local seasonal workers. As demand for soft fruit and our production has grown, so has our demand for labour.

Over a six month season, we now employ 164 full-time staff and approximately 1,000 seasonal workers, and in our day-to-day operations use the services of many local Angus businesses.

Five neighbouring soft fruit farms also have a significant demand for labour. The majority, but certainly not all, of our seasonal staff are foreign.

Contrary to your editorial, we employ many local students home from university – if there were a “battalion” of these to fill demand each summer as suggested, we would be delighted!

I agree with Mr Taylor about the sense of work and the freedom it afforded picking berries as a child – I earned my own pocket money working in a local shop from the age of 12.

Sadly, legislation dictates we cannot employ persons under the age of 16. Foreign labour has not replaced local labour on our farm – it has filled the huge extra demand for labour which is not available locally.

We are grateful to our workforce, for the contribution they have made to our business and to the local and national economy.

Without our foreign seasonal employees however, our business is unviable. As a consequence there would be a loss of full, part-time and seasonal jobs for the significant number of local people we also employ.

So enjoy Scottish berries while you can. Post Brexit, our foreign workforce will be abroad, picking the imported fruit which will then fill our supermarket shelves. Debbie Porter.

East Seaton, Arbroath.

Eastern European workers picking fruit in Angus. A farmer explains they are vital to her business.