Sep 2006
Funding future in produce
Chris White
European fresh fruit and vegetable businesses are benefiting from the historically high levels of movement of workers now happening across the EU.
This is one of the conclusions to be drawn from the latest statistics published just over two years after 10 countries from eastern Europe joined the European Union and more or less a year before Romania and Bulgaria are due to join as full members of the EU.
It seems that the current levels of cross-European migration, which are almost unparalleled in the EU’s 50-year history, are allowing economic sectors such as food processing to thrive in the face of intense competition.
That is surely true of the fresh fruit and vegetable sector, which more than many other sectors of the economy has to come to rely on large numbers of relatively low-paid, hard-working people to bring its products to the market.
This applies especially to the more affluent parts of the EU, where the cost of living is higher and wages have had to keep pace with growth.
For example, the latest UK government figures released last month show that some 447,000 eastern Europeans have registered to work in the UK since May 2004.
Most of these new migrants come from Poland, which alone contributed over 200,000 people, with almost all of them aged 18 to 34.
The figures show that many of these migrants to the UK are now employed in the food businesses, with the fresh produce sector an employer of significant size.
No wonder that East Anglia and Kent, both locations of much of Britain’s fresh produce growing and handling operations, are both regions that are now home to the largest number of migrants from the new member states.
“A lot of businesses rely on these people to pick the harvest and the harvest doesn’t wait. It’s ready and it has to be delivered to customers,” commented Philip Hudson, chief horticultural adviser of the National Farmers’ Union, the UK’s main agricultural group. “These people are absolutely vital. Without them, some businesses wouldn’t be able to function at all.”
Immigration has helped push the UK population to over 60m for the first time, with numbers growing by 375,000 or 0.6 per cent in the year to June 2006. This is the fastest growth rate since 1965 and the largest annual increase in the UK population since 1962.
Significantly, government figures also show that the new migrants to Britain are staying for relatively short periods of time. Although net migration to the UK reached 222,600 more migrants coming in than leaving in 2004, some 193,000 of these new migrants say they want to return to their country of origin within two years. As one newspaper put it, this is “a guest workforce that doesn’t stay long”.
Happy to take the kind of low paid jobs that are shunned by their Western European counterparts, these new migrants are very often highly-skilled young people with very big ambitions.
Many of them have left their own countries to profit from the higher wages abroad. And many of them are also here to develop their skills.
You can bet that some of these new migrants who today are working on a packing line somewhere in western Europe will tomorrow be among those entrepreneurs to set up their own fresh produce businesses in eastern Europe.
So fresh produce businesses over here, which are already finding it difficult to get young people to join our sector, could do worse than to identify the brightest and the best of these new migrants to help them take their businesses forward.
After all, isn’t this a sector that prides itself on people who know what it means to get their hands dirty?
European fresh fruit and vegetable businesses are benefiting from the historically high levels of movement of workers now happening across the EU.
This is one of the conclusions to be drawn from the latest statistics published just over two years after 10 countries from eastern Europe joined the European Union and more or less a year before Romania and Bulgaria are due to join as full members of the EU.
It seems that the current levels of cross-European migration, which are almost unparalleled in the EU’s 50-year history, are allowing economic sectors such as food processing to thrive in the face of intense competition.
That is surely true of the fresh fruit and vegetable sector, which more than many other sectors of the economy has to come to rely on large numbers of relatively low-paid, hard-working people to bring its products to the market.
This applies especially to the more affluent parts of the EU, where the cost of living is higher and wages have had to keep pace with growth.
For example, the latest UK government figures released last month show that some 447,000 eastern Europeans have registered to work in the UK since May 2004.
Most of these new migrants come from Poland, which alone contributed over 200,000 people, with almost all of them aged 18 to 34.
The figures show that many of these migrants to the UK are now employed in the food businesses, with the fresh produce sector an employer of significant size.
No wonder that East Anglia and Kent, both locations of much of Britain’s fresh produce growing and handling operations, are both regions that are now home to the largest number of migrants from the new member states.
“A lot of businesses rely on these people to pick the harvest and the harvest doesn’t wait. It’s ready and it has to be delivered to customers,” commented Philip Hudson, chief horticultural adviser of the National Farmers’ Union, the UK’s main agricultural group. “These people are absolutely vital. Without them, some businesses wouldn’t be able to function at all.”
Immigration has helped push the UK population to over 60m for the first time, with numbers growing by 375,000 or 0.6 per cent in the year to June 2006. This is the fastest growth rate since 1965 and the largest annual increase in the UK population since 1962.
Significantly, government figures also show that the new migrants to Britain are staying for relatively short periods of time. Although net migration to the UK reached 222,600 more migrants coming in than leaving in 2004, some 193,000 of these new migrants say they want to return to their country of origin within two years. As one newspaper put it, this is “a guest workforce that doesn’t stay long”.
Happy to take the kind of low paid jobs that are shunned by their Western European counterparts, these new migrants are very often highly-skilled young people with very big ambitions.
Many of them have left their own countries to profit from the higher wages abroad. And many of them are also here to develop their skills.
You can bet that some of these new migrants who today are working on a packing line somewhere in western Europe will tomorrow be among those entrepreneurs to set up their own fresh produce businesses in eastern Europe.
So fresh produce businesses over here, which are already finding it difficult to get young people to join our sector, could do worse than to identify the brightest and the best of these new migrants to help them take their businesses forward.
After all, isn’t this a sector that prides itself on people who know what it means to get their hands dirty?
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So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen,
goodbye…
Caroline Pike
As you know, ladies and gentlemen, all good things must come to an end. Thankfully, many not-so-good things also have a finite shelf-life so you may be relieved to read that my tenure as editor of Eurofruit Magazine is now drawing to a close. At the end of this month I shall be leaving to take up the position of Professor of Quantum Physics at the University of Duisburg.
Truth be told, they’ve been chasing me for years but what with my advisory work for the UN and training for the British Olympic Show Jumping team, I simply haven’t had the time. Something just had to give.
To be honest, I’ve been thinking for a long time that the danger money they pay me at Eurofruit Magazine no longer justifies the risk (in my time I’ve been manhandled on a moonlit camel ride at the pyramids in Giza and shipwrecked in the Western Cape).
On the plus side, however, I’ve visited many wonderful countries, met some truly lovely people and eaten an awful lot of delicious fruit. And despite the many challenges faced by the entire trade on a daily basis, it is heartening to see that the industry is going just as strong as it was when I started as a staff journalist nearly seven years ago.
In some ways, the potential for boosting fresh produce consumption has never been greater, given rising obesity rates and the ever-increasing bank of scientific research highlighting the ability of a diet rich in fruit and vegetables to combat this and other health problems. No doubt, my hugely talented and very lovely colleague, Mike Knowles, who is taking over as editor, will keep you up to date with the latest developments on this front.
Regrets? I’ve had a few (Prognosfruit 2000 was a particularly low point for me). But I’ll take away very many happy memories with me. So, to all of you who have ever sent me a story, invited me on a trip or replied to my no doubt hugely inconvenient requests for information, I thank you. But thanks especially to all my wonderful colleagues, whom I am going to miss tremendously.
(OK, I’m actually leaving to have a baby so please feel free to send me any of your favourite cake recipes and knitting patterns.)
As you know, ladies and gentlemen, all good things must come to an end. Thankfully, many not-so-good things also have a finite shelf-life so you may be relieved to read that my tenure as editor of Eurofruit Magazine is now drawing to a close. At the end of this month I shall be leaving to take up the position of Professor of Quantum Physics at the University of Duisburg.
Truth be told, they’ve been chasing me for years but what with my advisory work for the UN and training for the British Olympic Show Jumping team, I simply haven’t had the time. Something just had to give.
To be honest, I’ve been thinking for a long time that the danger money they pay me at Eurofruit Magazine no longer justifies the risk (in my time I’ve been manhandled on a moonlit camel ride at the pyramids in Giza and shipwrecked in the Western Cape).
On the plus side, however, I’ve visited many wonderful countries, met some truly lovely people and eaten an awful lot of delicious fruit. And despite the many challenges faced by the entire trade on a daily basis, it is heartening to see that the industry is going just as strong as it was when I started as a staff journalist nearly seven years ago.
In some ways, the potential for boosting fresh produce consumption has never been greater, given rising obesity rates and the ever-increasing bank of scientific research highlighting the ability of a diet rich in fruit and vegetables to combat this and other health problems. No doubt, my hugely talented and very lovely colleague, Mike Knowles, who is taking over as editor, will keep you up to date with the latest developments on this front.
Regrets? I’ve had a few (Prognosfruit 2000 was a particularly low point for me). But I’ll take away very many happy memories with me. So, to all of you who have ever sent me a story, invited me on a trip or replied to my no doubt hugely inconvenient requests for information, I thank you. But thanks especially to all my wonderful colleagues, whom I am going to miss tremendously.
(OK, I’m actually leaving to have a baby so please feel free to send me any of your favourite cake recipes and knitting patterns.)
Basket Case: local sourcing
Unless your ham has been specially
selected from a pig just 30km down the road, your cream clotted at
the local dairy or your apples hand-picked by a 100-year-old farmer
who has been in the business “man and boy”, it seems
that nowadays your shopping bag simply doesn’t cut it with
the upper crust.
Local sourcing is the recent trend taking the world’s foodies by storm, from the UK to continental Europe and the US. As the issue of food miles receives more and more press attention, and farmers’ markets and organic stores increase in popularity all over the globe in a bid to boost local, small-scale businesses, retailers are having to take a more eco-friendly, socially responsible stance.
And so when products are in season, retailers are now running huge promotions to boost sales of local goods, such as the UK asparagus campaign featured on page 100 of this month’s magazine.
The irony of course is that those consumers jumping on the local sourcing bandwagon are probably the very same complaining about the effects that production is having on their surrounding environment. The polytunnel debate raging in the UK as a result of increased strawberry plantings is just one example – if customers want fresh UK-grown strawberries, they will have to learn to put up with the technology needed to produce them. If not, then we will be back to higher levels of imports during the summer months.
Which raises the question: is this foodie trend a short-lived one? Or is the demand for local sourcing here to stay?
Local sourcing is the recent trend taking the world’s foodies by storm, from the UK to continental Europe and the US. As the issue of food miles receives more and more press attention, and farmers’ markets and organic stores increase in popularity all over the globe in a bid to boost local, small-scale businesses, retailers are having to take a more eco-friendly, socially responsible stance.
And so when products are in season, retailers are now running huge promotions to boost sales of local goods, such as the UK asparagus campaign featured on page 100 of this month’s magazine.
The irony of course is that those consumers jumping on the local sourcing bandwagon are probably the very same complaining about the effects that production is having on their surrounding environment. The polytunnel debate raging in the UK as a result of increased strawberry plantings is just one example – if customers want fresh UK-grown strawberries, they will have to learn to put up with the technology needed to produce them. If not, then we will be back to higher levels of imports during the summer months.
Which raises the question: is this foodie trend a short-lived one? Or is the demand for local sourcing here to stay?