Migrant cap 'will hit fruit crop'

The NFU says the cap, which limits the number of non-EU citizens entering the country, is causing a shortage of fruit-pickers.

Farmers are calling for the government to raise the cap from its current limit of just over 16,000.

The Home Office says farms should recruit from closer to home.

Farmers say they have found it increasingly difficult to recruit seasonal workers since the expansion of the EU in 2004, which gave membership to countries including Poland.

'Absolute travesty'

Elaine Clarke runs a soft fruit farm in Tamworth, West Midlands, which has been short of staff for the last two years.

She told the BBC: "With the advent of the new countries joining the EU now they can go to any job within the UK and there's less interest on their part to come picking strawberries."

She added: "At the end of the day when you spend a lot of time and money and effort preparing and growing crops, if you can't get them picked it's an absolute travesty.

"We lost a lot of fruit last year and look certain to continue in the same vein this year unless we can get some students in."

Under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS) farms are allowed to recruit people from outside the EU.

"Immigration is a hot political topic and it may be they don't want to change this policy because it is a political topic"
Phillip Hudson, NFU

In 2005 the government cut the numbers allowed to enter under the scheme from 25,000 to 16,250.

While Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU at the start of this year work restrictions were imposed.

Low skilled seasonal workers from the two countries can only enter under the SAWS. The government is to restrict the SAWS to citizens of the two countries from 2008.

Farmers fear this will further reduce the number of people they can recruit as pickers.

'Urgent action needed'

An ongoing problem has been the difficulty of recruiting local people to work in the fields, which is seen has hard, low paid labour.

Christine Lumb, director of Concordia, a company that arranges for foreign seasonal workers to come and work on farms, said unemployed people in the UK were reluctant to take on seasonal work.

She said: "The current benefits system means that if you come off benefits it is very difficult then to go back on again, the work is very seasonal, the weather plays a huge part in whether or not you work on a particular day or not and it is extraordinarily hard work."

Earlier this year the NFU said some 13 UK growers of soft fruit and salad vegetables were facing a shortfall of 2,400 workers on the 4,400 needed this summer.

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