Easiest/nearest farm that wants people to help harvest?

[womanofdulwich]

I see the country is still short of enough people to work on farms. Does anyone know which are the nearest farms to Dulwich and what/who they need ?

[wordsworth]

womanofdulwich Wrote:

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> I see the country is still short of enough people

> to work on farms. Does anyone know which are the

> nearest farms to Dulwich and what/who they need ?

Would've thought Essex or Kent could be your destination?

[Pugwash]

Hewitts farm near Orpington?

[siousxiesue]

Quick Google search brings up lots of vacancies, although I was under the impression live on site was required

[Blah Blah]

Many farms house seasonal workers in caravans because there just aren't enough people locally to do the work. But there is the added complication now of the virus. How are workers transported to the farms? How are they accommodated? A shortage of seasonal workers was already a developing issue because of Brexit though. The pandemic has just made it worse.

[malumbu]

I picked peas as a student. With hard work you could make something around minimum wage. It was cash in hand but I would have been under the tax threshold. I may or may not have claimed benefit at the time. I expect most others had undeclared wages. It was a mix of students, older retired people, and casual agricultural labourers, I expect mainly Romanies. I wonder what happened to this sort of workforce. Spuds paid OK but was backbreaking, fruit picking was lousy pay and was gangs of school children. With raised fruit plants/bushes it looks easier now.

[Blah Blah]

Several things happened. New legislation around employment law and introduction of a min wage. In field mechanised packing vehicles, enabling produce to be delivered straight from the field. A supermarket war driving down wholesale price and driving demand up. This means that workers on farms now need to hit minimum productivity thresholds, often keeping pace with a packing machine in front of them, and as you say, a lot of the work is backbreaking, especially at a required pace.