On UK farms, the most exotic commodity is a British worker. So who will pick the fruit after Brexit?
Only one in a hundred seasonal fruit pickers in the UK is British, leading farmers to worry that post-Brexit restrictions on European workers will lead to harvests rotting
After a dozen futile calls to big farms, agricultural lobbyists and labour contractors, we finally found him.
The rarest of the rare, the British berry picker.
Meet Max Hughes, a 20-year-old university student and history major, who is spending his summer harvesting blackcurrants at the Snell family farm in Herefordshire. He rides in the back of a harvester all day, standing beside a Czech migrant and a couple of sun-bronzed Romanian guys, who know very little English.
“No matter, you can’t hear a thing they say over the noise,” Hughes said, gesturing toward the wheeled harvester beside him. Its vibrating metal fingers shake the currant bushes and bring the tart berries via conveyor belt to the sorting table, where Hughes and his teammates discard the leaves, twigs, slugs and occasional mouse – whatever you don’t want to see in a frozen fruit pack.
Britain today is completely dependent on foreign workers to pick its fruit and vegetables. According to the National Farmers Union, an industry lobbying group, of the 60,000 seasonal workers in the fields last year, barely one per cent was British. The vast majority come from Eastern Europe, particularly Bulgaria and Romania.
As long as Britain has remained part of the European Union, by treaty its doors have been wide-open to the “free movement” of fellow members, including those seasonal farmworkers who come for four or five months, get paid in British pounds and return home for the winter.
