Farmers say this year’s harvest has been hit by a shortfall in the total number of seasonal worker visas granted by the Home Office, delays in processing those visas and a collapse in the number of Ukrainian workers coming to the UK since the Russian invasion. Last year more than 60% of workers on seasonal visas were from Ukraine and 8% from Russia. This number has dropped significantly as adult Ukrainian men are unable to leave the country. Sky News also spoke to Russians who say their visa applications have been canceled without explanation by recruitment agencies, despite there being no explicit ban on Russians working in the UK. As a result of the pressure of work, individual farmers have already left crops worth hundreds of thousands of pounds in the ground and there are concerns about the industry’s ability to reap a full harvest during the current berry season and the upcoming apple and pear season. Derek Wilkinson, managing director of Sandfield Farms, part of G’s fresh produce group, employs more than 750 overseas workers on his Worcestershire farm. He told Sky News that labor shortages, caused in part by delays in processing visas, had already cost about £250,000 from his Worcestershire-grown asparagus and spring onion crop. “If we don’t have people, we just can’t harvest,” Mr Wilkinson said. “We’re trying to recruit locally and there’s just no people out there. The British just don’t want seasonal work, if you live in the UK you need a permanent job. We’re trying to recruit but we’d be doing very little recruitment.” Some visas took about six to seven weeks to process, “which is just ridiculous in my opinion,” Mr Wilkinson said. “I’m talking to growers in Holland and Germany who are all doing the same thing and can get a visa in a few days, so I’m not sure why it’s taking so long.” “That meant at the beginning of May, we were 40% short of people we should have here. They were hired but the visas just hadn’t been processed.” As a result, the company had lost 40 to 45,000kg of asparagus worth around £150,000 and 750,000 bunches of spring onions, which cost around £100,000, Mr Wilkinson said. The UK seasonal workforce has been declining since 2018 and the introduction of the seasonal worker visa regime after Brexit. It is one of the only routes for low-skilled and low-paid workers to enter the UK from abroad. Previously, most seasonal workers came from the European Union without restrictions. In 2021, approximately 30,000 seasonal worker visas were made available. This year an additional 10,000 were granted, of which 8,000 went to horticulture and 2,000 to alleviate production problems in poultry farming. The government plans to reduce the number of seasonal worker visas available next year before scrapping them altogether in 2024, with domestic workers and automation, including fruit-picking robots, filling the gap. The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) warns the plan is unrealistic and risks shrinking the horticulture sector as the government proposes an expansion as part of its recently published food strategy. Tom Bradshaw, deputy chairman of the NFU, said: “We have very low unemployment, we have 4% unemployed and millions of vacant jobs, so it is unrealistic to deliver from the home workforce when there are many permanent roles. .” Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 2:13 The prices of the cheapest food are increasing “The Immigration Advisory Committee has identified that seasonal gardening is unique and we need to embrace that,” Mr Bradshaw said. “We should be looking at the sector to be able to grow and deliver fresh British food and vegetables to our consumers, it’s a great success story, it’s something we can do very well with our climate, but at the moment we feel we have our hands tied behind our backs.” Sir Robert Goodwill, the Conservative chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, told Sky News that the seasonal worker scheme should remain as uncertainty about the supply of work could deter investment. “We want it to be a permanent plan. If you’re planting a vineyard or building a backpacker, you need to be sure you have the workforce to come in and do that work in the future. The program has been very successful and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t they make it permanent.” Despite high demand in the UK, Russian applicants struggle to obtain visas. Ilshat Nizammev from the southern city of Ufa told Sky News that his visa was canceled without explanation by a recruitment agency. “I wanted to come but my visa was canceled and I heard that 500 Russian visas were canceled just like me, so what can I do?” he said. “Our company sent us a long email, it said sorry for this information, we support the Russian, we support the people of Ukraine, but this year is difficult, we have never had this experience, we have never had so many people who cannot take visa, we can’t do anything for you.” The Home Office denied the visas had been delayed, insisting it was processing applications within the eight-week “service standard”, but granted visas for Ukrainian refugees had been prioritized. “We process simple seasonal worker visa applications within service standards and it is incorrect to say there are delays in issuing these visas,” a spokesman said. The ready access to seasonal labor enjoyed by the UK as a member of the European Union, particularly after the accession of 10 mainly Eastern European states in 2004, has shaped agriculture to some extent. The availability of workers made labor-intensive crops such as berries more viable, and there was tremendous growth in this market. The British Berry Growers Association says the extension is now in doubt, with the crop worth more than £36 million destroyed in 2021 because it could not be harvested. Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, which studies international migration and policy, says tightening labor could change cultures. “In the longer term, if there are fewer workers available, we could expect the UK to return to a position a little closer to where it was in the early 2000s, where we didn’t produce as many labour-intensive products,” he said. “In the short term, this can be quite disruptive for farmers who have built a business model based on the availability of a significant number of seasonal workers.”
