Farmers are finding it ‘impossible’ to hire work-shy Brits to pick their crops – and are now recruiting hardy workers from thousands of miles away to fill in.
Foreigners are flying from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and even India to work six days a week picking cauliflowers in Cornwall, earning up to £150 a day.
Farm owners says Brits are turning up their noses to the work and opting for more ‘cushy’ jobs because they can’t hack the 5am starts, long hours and gruelling weather conditions.
But the lack of local interest means workers from abroad are reaping the rewards, with one 23-year-old Tajik vegetable picker called Ali saying he’s earned enough cash to help him buy two properties back home, boasting: ‘I’m a rich man.’
David Simmons, a fifth-generation proprietor of Riveria Produce in Hayle, Cornwall, once had an estate bustling with local staff but said people are now ‘just not interested’. ‘The problem is, Brits have got it too cushy. We’re not hungry enough,’ he told BBC Two’s Simon Reeves Return to Cornwall.
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A 23-year-old vegetable picker called Ali says his work in the UK has helped him buy two homes back in his native country of Tajikistan (Ali is pictured speaking to the BBC)
Other foreign workers are pictured at the farm in Hayle, Cornwall
‘They would rather go behind the bar or work in a hotel or do something which is less strenuous.’
The award-winning farmer said his foreign workers were ‘totally dedicated to earning money’.
‘Their psyche is totally different to a lot of young people in the UK now,’ he continued. ‘Their psyche is to go out, earn as much money as they can as fast as they can; try and get their house, and get everything they want in life. And you’ve got to admire them for doing it.’
David Simmons, a fifth-generation proprietor of Riveria Produce in Hayle, Cornwall
Vegetable picker Ali, who shares a double bed with his uncle and lives in a mobile home, was delighted by his chance to work in the UK.
Chuckling about his lucrative work, the 23-year-old told the BBC: ‘I have two homes. I’m a rich man.
‘I bought one house with the money I earned here and in Russia.’
The end of free movement for EU workers post-Brexit meant that during the 2020 pandemic, Mr Simmons was forced to double down his efforts to get locals in to help pick his crop.
Adverts were placed in the local papers, social media and on TV, with 250 people expressing an interest. But of this, only 37 ever arrived – with numbers dwindling rapidly.
‘Within seven weeks we had one person left. We just couldn’t get any more people to come,’ Mr Simmons said, adding: ‘We’re just desperate to try and get local people to come and do this work but they’re just not interested.
Now 75 per cent of his pickers are from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with some coming from Ukraine and India. None are from the UK.
Workers can earn up to £150 a day for picking cauliflowers on this farm in Cornwall
At least 75 per cent of pickers on this farm in Cornwall are from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
The figures on Mr Simmons’ farm reflect the national picture, where 98 per cent of the UK’s 45,000 pickers have come from elsewhere in the globe, including Barbados, Kenya and Nepal.
Riviera works with recruitment companies who source staff primarily in the old Soviet Bloc and tell them what the job entails.
Fresh workers then then fly over and live in campervans that sleep two to six people. Recruits are mostly male but some are female, are typically aged between 20 and 40, and some arrive with relatives.
Speaking of his team, Mr Simmons said: ‘The people that come over are wonderful people, they really are. I’ve got the utmost respect for them, to go from one side of the world to the other and do this.’
In 2019, the quota for international pickers working in the UK was 2,500. But this has since been raised to 45,000 this year – which can be increased a further 10,000 a year if the Government deems it necessary.
Foreign vegetable pickers pictured at a farm in Hayle, in Cornwall
But concerns have been raised about the conditions some migrants have to endure working on British farms.
Earlier this year, a probe by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, revealed foreign workers had allegedly been mistreated at 20 farms, nurseries and packhouses in 2022.
One South African worker, called Angel, told the Bureau she felt like a ‘prisoner’, referred to by a three digit number assigned to her while on the farm and was constantly shouted at.
The single mother said: ‘Even before we start work the supervisors would be screaming at us… they would treat you like an animal,
‘Slavery has been outlawed, but it still exists within the farm.’
Are YOU a farmer struggling find local staff? Email [email protected]