17/04/20 Picking for Britain

Farming Today

• Episode: 17/04/20 Picking for Britain
• Website: Farming Today
• Feed URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj8q/episodes/downloads.rss
• Duration: 00:13:22
• Published: 2020-04-17 07:00

Today, picking for Britain: we hear from farmers trying to recruit British people to pick their crops. Peak demand for pickers is mid-May, and the coronavirus pandemic means the expected seasonal workers from eastern Europe are not coming in anything like the usual numbers. Defra is expected to launch a Pick for Britain campaign over the next few weeks and around 30,000 British people have already registered their interest in working on farms this summer. But many aren’t convinced enough local people will end up as pickers. Nick Ottewell grows salad in Kent. He grows 22 different types and over the past few years to cut down on labour has invested in some mechanisation of harvesting, but still needs 110 pickers. His company has been paying workers from Romania to live on the farm for the past two weeks even though there isn’t any work for them yet. Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Beatrice Fenton