Labour shortage causes threat to valuable produce

The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS), which is due to be phased out in 2010, has been one of the main sources of harvest workers. Last year the scheme was altered so that only 6% of the 16,250 worker quota was allocated to students from around the world, with the remainder reserved for Romanian and Bulgarian workers. This year the workers can only come from those two countries. In addition to this, the Government's Points Based Immigration System is barring Scottish growers from accessing non-EU unskilled workers even though they are only coming for a few months. Peter Loggie, NFU Scotland policy manager, highlighted his concerns: "Although there were labour shortages throughout last season these were particularly severe during September and October. This year there are already shortages with labour providers being unable to supply enough seasonal workers to Scottish growers." He added: "NFU has been critical both of the changes to SAWS and that the points based system does not allow for unskilled harvest workers. We believe that SAWS should be retained and restores to its previous format and that the points based scheme should allow for short-term entry by non EU workers to fill gaps, including those at the end of the harvest season."