We cannot stand by as good food rots in the fields

The combined effects of the pandemic and Brexit are bringing devastating consequences for the country’s horticulture sector. Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger tells Environment Secretary George Eustice that it’s time to forget the polit

THERE are times when I have to ask myself whatever happened to common sense – and one of those occasions is upon us.

I am prompted to write this as a result of an NFU survey which suggests we may have wasted as much as £60 million worth of fruit and vegetables in the first half of 2022 alone because we haven’t had enough hands to pick them.

That, George, is not merely a dispiritingly massive economic blow for growers – with individual losses already reaching £220,000 and some weeks of the growing season still to run – it is a massive waste of food. And this at a time when various arms of Government are trying to bear down on our annual food wastage.

Quite honestly we are making ourselves look fools if on the one hand we are encouraging retailers to abandon best-before dates and tackling other waste issues downstream in the food chain if we are standing idly by and watching perfectly good food rot in the fields and glasshouses before it can be harvested.

Particularly at a time when we are trying to improve the national diet by encouraging people to eat more vegetables and fruit. Particularly when the issue of national food security has suddenly bobbed up to the surface (what with goings-on in Ukraine and the worldwide effects of drought) and we are supposed to be doing our best to reduce our reliance on what other countries can send us.

And I have to say I found it particularly galling to discover that we are now even having to import spring onions – a crop which flourishes in our climate – from Germany at a time of year when they should be coming off our fields by the ton.

It’s no good trying to sweep all this away and say the horticulture sector should be looking to the British labour market for recruits.

Given that pre-Covid 99% of the horticulture workforce was composed of migrant workers and so that’s a mighty big ask, there is growing evidence that many British workers who are taken on either don’t turn up or walk away from the job after a few days.

Partly, of course, because at the moment there are so many job vacancies that they have concluded there are more attractive opportunities offered by indoor jobs with no lifting.

The worrying thing is that so many growers are already talking about reducing planting for next season in order to reduce the potential for waste, which is simply going to mean lower output and a need for even more imports to make up the shortfall.

Which is why I am supporting the NFU’s call to make the Seasonal Workers Scheme cheaper, easier and less infuriatingly bureaucratic to run. Whatever else Brexit was supposed to achieve it certainly wasn’t the decimation of our dynamic, innovative horticulture industry yet the longer we go on erecting pointless hurdles and obstacles in the paths of both those who want to come here and work and those who wish to employ them that is what we risk doing.

Surely anyone would agree that that is an unacceptably high price to pay.