More visas aim to avert food crisis as produce rot sets in

THE Government will add a further 10,000 visas for farm workers, it said yesterday, amid warnings of a food waste crisis as produce goes unpicked.

An additional 8,000 fruit and vegetable pickers and 2,000 poultry workers will be given a route to come to the country, George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, said.

Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, yesterday said there was an “absolute crisis” in food waste.

“It’s a growing problem,” she told Times Radio. “I know glasshouses where tomatoes remain unpicked, we know there was a big crop of lettuces that was ploughed back in last week.”

The plans were included in the Government’s food strategy, unveiled yesterday, which focused on improving resilience in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine and was largely welcomed by the NFU.

The strategy includes ambitions to source at least 50 per cent of public sector food locally or certified to higher standards. But it rejected proposals from its lead adviser for a salt and sugar tax, as well as efforts to cut meat consumption by 30 per cent, to help people eat more healthily.