Скачать или смотреть Blooming post Brexit - the daffodils waiting to be picked

(14 Mar 2021) LEAD IN:
Daffodils are going unpicked in the fields of England because of a post-Brexit migrant worker shortage.
Daffodil farmers are facing a triple misery this year, with labour shortages, lack of access to the European market and the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

STORY-LINE:
A field of golden daffodils dancing in the sunshine is one of the signs winter is ending and spring is on the way.
But for flower farmers a sight like this is not a welcome one - they want to cut the stems before the flowers emerge.
There's just one problem, there aren't enough migrant workers available to cut them.
Here on a farm in Lincolnshire, one of the largest flower producing areas in England, a group of 25 Romanians are busy picking.
But these workers are in high demand this year.
Adam Taylor, director of Taylor's Bulbs explains: "Every Spring season we require a certain number of people to crop the cut flowers, the cut daffodils in the field and normally we'd use 150 people (migrant workers) to do that job but those people just are not available, so this year it's 25."
Without the workers to cut the stems the flowers are being left in the field.
In a typical year Taylor's Bulbs would harvest 25 million daffodil stems but is estimating only six million will be cut this year.
Of course, every year there is some inevitable wastage due to the vast sizes of the fields.
Adam Taylor's cousin Sam Taylor, also a director at Taylor's bulbs and takes care of the farming side of the company.
He explains there can never be enough labour.
"Well even if we had a 1,000 pickers in this field we wouldn't harvest all the flowers, it would be impossible, there are millions of flowers in this field, so there are always flowers that are left over but we are picking less flowers than we normally would and again as I said, it's down to two things, partly Brexit, partly COVID," says Sam Taylor.
The worker shortage has been compounded by two main factors. Most importantly, a lack of provision by the government to allow seasonal workers from the EU to enter the UK.
It is permitted for food crops, but ornamental horticulture was initially left out of the scheme.
Adam Taylor says: "The government has come up with a seasonal workers scheme but unfortunately ornamental horticulture was not included in the pilot, we have been promised it will be included in the future but we don't know when exactly that's going to start. So it's presenting us with an issue because we need to plan ahead."
The global pandemic has also seen restrictions to global travel and will have dissuaded many migrant workers from making the trip.
A particularly fast picker can earn up to £180 a day if they work hard. In theory they get paid according to the amount they pick, but all the pickers are protected by a blanket of the UK's national minimum wage.
Sam Taylor explains how it is gruelling physical labour: "Some people are making some really good money so that's why if you're good at it it's really worth doing but it is back breaking work because you're bent double, you're literally bent double, all day, everyday picking. It's not for the faint-hearted, that's for sure. It's not for me I'm afraid."
British people have not been persuaded to try their hand at flower picking, and those that do rarely last more than a couple of days according to farmers.
So for the migrant workers, mostly coming from Romania, it's currently a boom time in the UK.

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