Picking berries in the UK

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, From Our Home Correspondent 21/07/2019

"He inherited a 35 acre farm near Maidstone from his father. Now he has 1000 acres of berries spread across 14 sites in Kent... The pickers, nearly all women, have been out since 5am, carefully but quickly plucking the ripe fruit. It's an early start because berries are better picked when they're cooler, less chance of bruising them. There are 900,000 strawberry plants in this field all under plastic giant polytunnels each about 300 yards long and 15 feet high. They permit better control of the growing conditions and have lengthened the growing season. Not a drop of rain reaches the plants though.

This is the only way to give consistent supply to the public, Tim explains. The supermarkets need fruit on the shelves every day. You can't ring up and say I'm sorry it was raining or we couldn't pick fruit today. That's not an excuse, he says. And polytunnels reduce the risk of a crop being damaged by the weather. The plants themselves aren't growing in the ground. They're in metal trays at shoulder height, their bright red fruits easy to see, but also unripe whites and green ones. There's no soil. Instead, the roots grow in a frame of shredded coconut husks. All we need to do, says Tim, is supply the fertilizer, the chemicals needed for growth, and then sunlight does the rest. And water I add, thinking I'm completing the picture. Well, H20 is a chemical, Tim jokes. This method of cultivation also means soil borne diseases and bugs can't damage the roots. There are sachets hanging from some of the branches. They look like tea bags. Each one contains hundreds of predatory mites ready to feast on the bad bugs. Bumblebees are brought in from Holland for pollination.

Not everyone would be comfortable with this way of growing food. The use of plastic, the fertilizers, the chemicals, it's certainly not organic. But Tim maintains it's the only way to produce on the scale needed to satisfy the market.

The other major ingredient needed is the workforce, up to 1500 pickers at peak time, that's now. Nearly all of them come from Bulgaria and Romania. They're here for six months or so then go back home. But the business runs all through the year importing and packing fruit from as far afield as Peru, South Africa, Morocco and Spain, when the UK production alone can't meet supermarket demand. So a core of workers stays here all year, preparing the fruit and keeping the berry supply going. It's like a family here, Sally Hodgeoff tells me... Sally's from Bulgaria's Muslim minority, his home village close to the Greek border. I met my wife here he says with a big smile. She was a picker. Our two children were born here. Sally introduced others from his village to Tim.

There are now more people from my village here than in the village itself. There are lots of opportunities, Sally explains. If you're not lazy, there's plenty of work he says. Most of the seasonal pickers are regulars who come back every year. They have the right attitude, Sally tells me. They know the system, there's no need to teach them.

But all this depends on economics. As long as Bulgarian wages remain low and the exchange rate against the pound is favorable, then the workers will keep coming. If that changes, and it's already changing, then seasonal work on British farms won't be as attractive. On top of that, the UK minimum wage is set to rise, making farm labor more expensive.

And yet the price of berries in the supermarkets has remained broadly stable for a decade. There will be a tipping point system when labor becomes too expensive and we either have to invest in robots, or we stop. At the moment robots which can match the dexterity and speed of skilled human pickers don't exist. Hopefully berries will still be grown in this country Tim says, if the price is right, but if the public are happy to import more of their food, that's what they'll do. You can't swim against the tide. You can't be sentimental. Then he adds with a smile. And I'll become a taxi driver"