Horticulture

Farm groups are very focused on trade policy, but their time would be better spent pushing for farmers to get a fairer price for their food, says Cornish lamb and beef farmer Rona Amiss.

With the final take-up of the Pick For Britain scheme patchy, Government must come up with a ‘Plan B’ to ensure growers can continue to access enough labour after Brexit, says Daniel Zeichner, Labour’s Shadow Farming Minister.

An online recruitment platform has restructured its business model to help target the demand for seasonal workers in picking jobs across UK farms.

The British Growers Association (BGA) has called for a massive expansion of the Government’s seasonal agricultural workers’ pilot after the coronavirus pandemic ‘shelved’ the Home Office’s original plans.

NFU’s horticulture and potatoes board chairwoman Alison Capper has warned thousands of pickers are needed to fill ‘peak’ jobs for the harvest season fast approaching.

The Covid-19 nightmare may have handed UK farming an opportunity to resolve a major Brexit threat – loss of EU labour. Let’s make sure we give our new ‘land army’ a good experience this summer, says George Dunn, chief executive of the TFA.

Defra has launched its Pick for Britain campaign as part of efforts to attract British workers to help harvest crops, but industry chiefs continue to raise concerns over severe labour shortages.

Nearly half of the UK’s fruit and vegetables are now produced to the environmental standards demanded by the LEAF Marque accreditation scheme.

Farmers and recruiters have turned to charter flights to bring in fruit and vegetable pickers from Romania to keep up with demand during the coronavirus pandemic.

The support Government gives to farmers during the pandemic will be an indication of how far Ministers intend to back us on Brexit, says Cheshire dairy farmer Phil Latham.