For almost 100 years, Chris Chinn's family has farmed asparagus in the roll...
“It is incredibly clear cut - there is no UK asparagus on your supermarket shelves without seasonal migrant workers,” Chinn, whose great grandfather started as a tenant farmer in 1925, told Reuters.Britain’s asparagus season is short and early - traditionally running from April 23, known as Saint George’s Day, to Midsummer’s Day in mid-June. It will be the first big test of the 2019 seasonal labor crisis.
Chinn’s concern grew after 20 of the 100 or so workers due to help cultivate the crops in January failed to turn up. “They go somewhere which is most straightforward and any, even minor, hurdles you put in their way is just nudging them ever closer to going somewhere else,” he said. Elina Kostadinova, a 28 year-old harvest manager at Cobrey Farms who is from Varna on Bulgaria’s Black Sea, said many workers were worried about coming to Britain because of Brexit.
Chinn said the idea of British workers plugging the gap was fanciful. He does not expect much help from the supermarkets, where sales volumes have already been negotiated for the season and prices have been fixed, barring exceptional circumstances.Britain’s fruit and vegetable sector relies on up to 80,000 seasonal workers from the EU each year.
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