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Well to be fair, veggie prices will go up regardless across Europe due to the drought conditions in Southern Spain and elsewhere.
Is southern Spain a plain?
Does the rain in Spain mainly fall there?
North American cultural thing from many years ago
Is southern Spain a plain?
Does the rain in Spain mainly fall there?
North American cultural thing from many years ago
And crops are left to rot in the ground with nobody to pick them.
UK crops left to rot after drop in EU farm workers in Britain after Brexit referendum | The Independent
Parts of the UK that backed a Leave vote would face the heaviest hit as a result of Brexit, according to estimates by government officials.
The forecasts, seen by MPs, model the 15-year impact of the UK staying in the single market, doing a trade deal with the EU or leaving without a deal.
These folks are hardly representative. I wouldn't expect 5 people with zero experience whatsoever to be able to compete with experienced workers on their first day at many jobs, let alone one that has such harsh conditions due to weather. As prices go up, innovation will follow or competition will move in from foreign suppliers.
Those local people are representative of those who will be expected/forced/drafted in to do the job. The implications of Brexit are looking worse every day, and a lot of damage is alrady done.
~ people cannot be forced to harvest cabbages for London.
Then let them do it a season and then show how well they perform. More people than not suck their first day of work on a new job productivity-wise. In addition, people cannot be forced to harvest cabbages for London.
Actually.... it has been done before. Several countries in Europe have mandatory rules to receive money from the state. For example, in Norway they told unemployed.. here is a job and it is say far away up north. You take it, or we cut your benefits. In Spain, people are literally put to work to clean streets and country side roads to prevent forest fires and such.
So it can be done if needed.
These folks are hardly representative. I wouldn't expect 5 people with zero experience whatsoever to be able to compete with experienced workers on their first day at many jobs, let alone one that has such harsh conditions due to weather. As prices go up, innovation will follow or competition will move in from foreign suppliers.
I think the point is the work is so low skilled that each year most people coming into work such jobs have little experience. In order to lure more people from abroad some farms are establishing accommodation to give the workers whilst they're here, language courses and other little thrills. They're also pushing to get the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme re-introduced. Something the government is studiously avoiding talking about as, well, they seem to believe that the main reason people voted leave was to stop immigrants. Losing free movement from Europe then introducing a scheme that allows people from non-EU countries to come in for six months seems a little counter intuitive.
As for investment, that is already happening. But it takes time and because, globally, picking food relies on cheap labour there is somewhat of a lack of investment in automation and the like. You are right though - after some time that would change. But the key word there is time. A lot of damage to the industry is going to occur before a new balance can be found. And foreign investment seems unlikely to make up the difference, as farming fruit and vegetables in the UK hardly screams 'money maker' to foreign agribusinesses. More likely supermarkets and the like will head to Africa. We get like 85% of our food imports from Europe. We only grow 11%'ish of our own fruit for example. So not only would investment have to focus on making picking less labour intensive, which would require a significant amount of money, farms would also have to dramatically increase production. UK produced fruit even under optimal conditions would be too expensive for the average consumer and it's unlikely we'd be able to grow enough anyway. Defra reckons that defaulting to WTO rules would mean an increase in the price of imported food of around 11%.
So.... I mean I was waffling a bit there but the heading to this post is right. One way or the other, fruit and veg is going to get more expensive because of our leaving the EU.
Your farms are generally too small as land is too relatively expensive to buy to farm which will always be the bane of British agriculture. It even makes the technology scale-ability an issue because you have to wait until the price drops significantly on new technology to make it affordable generally for smaller producers. The focus probably should be on livestock/dairy and leave it to Tesco, Waitrose et als to deal with delivering the rest at affordable prices.
No worries, Brexit agricultural policy will bring us - pigs that might fly, cows that jump over the moon, which is a moon made of blue cheese, all reinforced by government announcements that crab-apples and curdled milk are the new superfoods.
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