Crops go to waste as UK farmers struggle to find workers

euronews.com

10 points·haunter··4 comments

Remember headlines like "MILLIONS of EU migrants grab our jobs: Time for Brexit to FINALLY take control of borders" (Macer Hall in the Daily Express, 2016)?

They forgot the qualifier: millions of [...] jobs we don't want to do.

From here it will go as follows:

1. Farming (and other industries relying on cheap imported labor) will become more expensive in Britain.

2. The produce will be too expensive for the international market, depriving Britain of a source of income.

3. Either the British government will subsidize farmers in some way, impose tariffs on imports to keep their farmers competitive locally, try to attract cheap workers again, or just wait until British farmers disappear/the ensuing trade imbalance devalues the GBP so much Britons become the cheap labor.

I guess working conditions and pay is bad otherwise people would swarm to these entry level jobs.

How could the hourly wage they offer not be in the article ...

The problem is mostly working conditions. They're set up to keep migrant workers living on site, while most locals would want to live at home. Doing the work well and quickly is skilled, but the pay is low. It's backbreaking labour, and also seasonal. Finally, most goods are globally traded, so if you pay enough to overcome the above, you might lose your markets to imports anyway.

You can whine and die or you can automate picking up of crops when nobody wants to do that.

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