Recently The Guardian ran an article by John Harris called “They say after Brexit there’ll be food rotting in the fields. It’s already started.” Harris points out how vulnerable the industry is. Nearly half the fruit and vegetable industry workforce coming to the UK from the EU (rising to 90% for seasonal pickers). As Brexit makes the UK look an unfriendly place for Eastern European migrants whose own countries’ economies are on the up, we're already told that a huge employment agent in the sector reports he’s 20% down on staff. The agent foresees that crops will go spoiled and unpicked because of it. Some of the big growers, who run on tiny margins, may well ‘consider their investment’ and choose to set up elsewhere. Central and eastern Europe quite possibly.
So what will happen? It’s widely anticipated that British people won’t want to pick food – and the main growing areas of the country coincide with areas of low unemployment. So do - as Harris's article implies - inevitably face a future where Britain relinquishes even more of its food sovereignty, with domestic production decreasing and food miles and prices rocketing?
