Farmers fly in Romanian workers to harvest fruit and vegetables

HUNDREDS of Romanian fruit and vegetable pickers are to be flown in to the UK as travel restrictions left British farms understaffed.

Farmers have been warning of looming fruit and vegetable shortages, because they usually rely on around 90,000 seasonal workers a year, mostly from abroad.

Now, specially-chartered planes bringing foreign workers have been landing on British soil, with an expected 450 workers to be flown in over the next few days.

One plane was expected to land at Stansted airport yesterday afternoon, and another, with 150 aboard, planned to land today.

It is understood that one of the planes was organised by a salad producer with farms in Cambridgeshire, and another by a producer based in Lincolnshire. Air Charter Service, based in Surrey, said a private farming company in the UK had paid for today’s flight. The passengers will not be allowed to fly if they have coronavirus symptoms, and will be required to enact social distancing on the flight.

Workers have been recruited from overseas despite rising unemployment due to the coronavirus lockdown, with around 450,000 new unemployment benefit claimants being recorded. There has also been a national campaign to recruit British workers to pick fruit and vegetables to replace the foreign workers.

The Country Land and Business Association previously warned that travel restrictions put in place to reduce the spread of Covid-19 would leave fruit and vegetables to rot in the field as farms struggled to procure staff.

The National Farmers’ Union said it was not involved in the procurement of foreign labour and that it had been focusing on sourcing British workers for farms. It is meeting with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs regularly to discuss options.

We are now entering the busy harvest period for the UK, with farms needing pickers for asparagus, broad beans and salads now, and more produce set to ripen in coming weeks.

Some British workers have been successfully deployed in farms, with volunteering charity Concordia securing thousands through its Feed The Nation campaign. A spokesman for the charity said: “Almost 90 per cent of applicants are UK citizens, half of whom have lost their livelihoods due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Only 30 per cent have worked in farming in the past.”

The government-backed Land Army campaign has signed up around 32,000 workers, but only 4,000 have made themselves available for interview.

Pickers will earn an average of £350 a week for around 40 hours of work, and housing is provided.