Harvest labour: thinking outside the box
Note: this is an excerpt from the latest issue of the AFG magazine. The full article can be viewed online at Summer 2020 AFG.
With harvest labour shortages looming this season, growers already harvesting cherries, summer fruit and other fruit share the strategies they are using to attract and retain workers.
By JUDY KENNEDY
COVID-19 has severely limited the number of summer workers. Backpacker numbers are down 51.4 per cent due to the COVID-19 pandemic and only 6,600 of the usual 12,000 people in the Seasonal Worker Programme have been able to travel to Australia.
Few Australians have taken up state and federal government incentives to do harvest work. This is despite a $3 million campaign in Western Australia, $17 million in Victoria, $1.9 million in Tasmania and $1.1 million in Queensland.1
As apple and pear growers prepare for the coming harvest, the experience of those already harvesting earlier crops provides valuable insights.
Fiona Hall leads the COVID-Safe Plan at BiteRiot by example. Photo: Pip Farquharson.
Novel solutions to offset shortage: Fiona Hall, BiteRiot, NSW – cherries
Encouraging workers to sign agreements to ensure they turn up and providing accommodation for up to 50 Sydney private school leavers who would normally be at Schoolies Week or taking a gap year are just a few of cherry and apple grower and marketer Fiona Hall’s strategies to attract harvest labour in NSW.
Fiona is managing director of BiteRiot and packs cherries for around a
dozen growers at Orange and Mudgee who require 1000 pickers over the season, with 800 employed at the peak of harvest.
“In August, after hearing stories about people finding only a quarter of the staff they’d been promised had turned up, we began asking workers to sign a commitment to lock them in,” Fiona said.
“For the past six weeks we’ve been asking grey nomads, school leavers, university students and whatever backpackers we can get to confirm their arrival and length of stay, but it’s challenging – for each one we get, we lose one, and we’re competing against the grain harvest.
“The problem too is that these are inexperienced pickers, so we’re expecting a big turnover of staff and we’ll need to throw a lot of resources at it. JobKeeper allows the Aussies to stay home.”
Fiona has turned to some novel solutions to ensure harvest runs smoothly, on the back of holding some fruit back and thinning the cherry crop more than normal.
“We’ve got a team of kids from private schools in Sydney who are coming with some parents as supervisors and we’ll provide accommodation in campsites and the council-owned Scout hall, as well as the local university residential halls,” she explained. “We’ve invited 50 and 15 have already committed.”
“We’ll work with council to ensure that it’s comfortable, regularly cleaned accommodation and that PPE is supplied. We may have to pay more than usual to keep the workers here.”
Fiona says the company has already completed its COVID-19 Safety Plan and the installation of a larger cherry grader will allow more distancing. Workers will have their temperatures monitored and use a QR code to check into the facilities, and visitors will be asked to confirm they’re not from a COVID-19 hotspot.
“The impact of COVID-19 detection in our orchards or packhouse at such an intense time would be an absolute disaster, as it would mean a complete shutdown,” Fiona said.
“Workers won’t need to wear masks. We’ve recently upgraded our cherry grading shed with a bigger grader so that means we can socially distance a lot more.”
The company is also reviewing its export markets in light of delays in China’s inspection of some agricultural imports from Australia.
Last year 60 per cent of BiteRiot’s exports – half the cherry crop – went to China, but Fiona says this season is likely to see a lot more volume into Vietnam and South Korea, as well as Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore to spread the risk.
Further reading
Harvest labour: thinking outside the box (full article, p10 of AFG Summer 2020)
