10/05/2024 - Seasonal labour, Portuguese rice and growing wasabi
Will five more years of seasonal-worker visas and Β£50 million for new tech be enough to fix a lack of labour in farming and food processing?
The Governmentβs announcement that the seasonal worker visa scheme is being extended for five years has been welcomed by farming organisations. It comes as part of DEFRA's response to an independent review into Labour Shortages in the Food Supply Chain which was published last summer. Also in that response is a commitment to "turbo-charge" investment in automation with an extra 50 million pounds of funding for new technology for automating pack houses and to improve robotic pickers.
Jon Oldβs family own around 16 hectares of watercress beds across Hampshire and Dorset. Their watercress ends up on the shelves of major supermarkets but since 2010, theyβve also been growing something else: wasabi. Wasabi is particularly difficult to grow - Jon calls it the the βGoldilocks Cropβ because everything has to be just right!
And our whistle-stop tour of farming in the West of Europe with Cornish farmer and Farming Today journalist Stuart Oates concludes on the Coast of Portugal, where one of the crops he discovers is rice.
Presented by Caz Graham
Produced for ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Audio in Bristol by Heather Simons
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- Fri 10 May 2024 05:45ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
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Farming Today
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