Access to EU labour after Brexit is vital for dairy farms
“The specific need for labour on dairy farms must be considered within Brexit negotiations and migration targets if an almost catastrophic failure within the dairy farming sector is to be avoided”.
That is one of the conclusions of a recently published report by The Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers. The association has expressed serious concern about the UK’s pending exit from the European Union, when access to a large workforce meeting dairy farming’s specific requirements could be lost.
The RABDF’s latest survey results showed that 56 per cent of UK dairy farmers currently employ workers from the EU. Dairy farming’s needs for labour differs from other agricultural sectors. While many agricultural sectors rely on seasonal unskilled labour, especially around harvest, the requirements of dairy farming are very different.
Dairy farming is a year-round business requiring relatively high levels of skill and an acquired knowledge of the farm and animals. In recent years dairy farmers have found it increasing difficult to recruit British workers who seemingly do not want to work on dairy farms. Today, many workers come from central or eastern Europe, and as the report says, an arrangement that is working well for both employers and employees.
RABDF is concerned that access to a workforce meeting dairy farming’s specific requirements could be lost when the UK leaves the EU. It would have a significant impact on the UK’s 13,000 or so dairy producers, and their production which equates to a tenth of Europe’s total milk supply. Furthermore, the production of milk is responsible for 80,000 jobs within the British food and drink sector creating an annual turnover of £6 billion.
It is not just dairy farmers that rely on overseas workers. The CEO of Arla UK has recently highlighted the need for access to non-UK labour. Almost a half of dairy processing business have employed non-UK nationals and about two thirds of logistics businesses have done the same.
If we look at the wider picture, the UK’s self-sufficiency for dairy products is only 77 per cent, and ambitions from New Zealand and Ireland among others to increase their exports to the UK are well known. Any decline in domestic dairy production arising from a lack of labour could, in the long term, lead to the UK losing market share to imports.
As RABDF argues in its report, it is vital that with Brexit looming, our Government has strategies in place to ensure that there is access to EU workers in a post-Brexit world.
John Sumner is secretary of Shropshire Chamber of Agriculture.
