Would the fruit-pickers of Poland and Romania please hurry back to the UK’s farms? The Britons who have replaced them are struggling to match their harvesting skills.
At two soft-fruit farms in the southeast of England, British workers picked at a rate of only 33lb 8oz and 35lb 4oz an hour, compared with the 62lb an hour managed by migrant pickers, according to data supplied to the National Farmers’ Union.
Alison Capper, 52, normally relies on eastern European labourers coming back each year to work at her farm in Suckley, Worcestershire. During lockdown, however, she had to recruit a dozen local Britons to plant the hops and apples that she grows on Stocks Farm.
She praised her British recruits — who included furloughed workers and