Abstract
At the turn of the twenty-first century there were three family members for every full-time worker on English farms. Certain sectors of farming, however, particularly horticultural production, still rely heavily on seasonal and casual labours. This workforce traditionally was made up of local women and children, but since the late twentieth century the vast majority of casual workers have been migrants recruited from Eastern Europe and beyond. This concluding chapter asks why this change occurred, and what it reveals about the nature of farm work today. Intensification of production systems, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme, the rise of the modern gang system and the implementation of the Gangmasters Licensing Act of 2004 are all explored. The main themes of this book are drawn together.
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Notes
- 1.
Craig Taylor, Return to Akenfield: Portrait of an English village in the 21st Century (London, 2006), pp. 104–111.
- 2.
DEFRA, Farming Statistics, Final Land Use, Livestock Populations and Agricultural Workforce at 1 June 2014, England, Table 12, p. 16. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/farming-statistics-final-land-use-livestock-populations-and-agricultural-workforce-as-at-1-june-2014-england.
- 3.
For an overview, see Felicity Lawrence, Not on the label (London, 2004).
- 4.
Migration Advisory Committee, Migrant seasonal workers: The impact on the horticulture and food processing sectors of closing the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme and the Sectors Based Scheme (May 2013), p. 129.
- 5.
Migration Advisory Committee, Migrant seasonal workers, p. 130.
- 6.
Sam Scott, ‘Making the case for Temporary Migrant Worker Programmes: Evidence from the UK’s rural guestworker (“SAWS”) scheme’, Journal of Rural Studies, 40 (August 2015), pp. 1–11 (p. 5).
- 7.
Ben Rogaly, Intensification of Work-Place Regimes in British Agriculture (June 2006), p. 12.
- 8.
NFU, Seasonal labour survey: Results and analysis (2013), pp. 7–8.
- 9.
Bridget Anderson, Martin Ruhs, Ben Rogaly and Sarah Spencer, Fair enough? Central and East European migrants in low-wage employment in the UK (May 2006), pp. 70, 79 and 69.
- 10.
Migration Advisory Committee, Migrant seasonal workers, p. 51.
- 11.
DEFRA was formed in June 2001, when the MAFF was merged with the Department of Environment, Transport, and the Regions.
- 12.
Allan Findlay and David McCollum, ‘Recruitment and employment regimes: Migrant labour channels in the UK’s rural agribusiness sector, from accession to recession’, Journal of Rural Studies, 30 (2013), pp. 10–19.
- 13.
Sam Scott, ‘Migrant-local hiring queues in the UK food industry’, Population, Space and Place, 19, 5 (2013), pp. 459–471 (p. 461).
- 14.
Taylor, Return to Akenfield, pp. 170–171.
- 15.
House of Commons debate, 21 May 1997, Vol. 294, Col. 678.
- 16.
The Times, 16 January 1990, p. 3. For early reports on the re-emergence of the gang system and the use of UK urban residents see The Times, 6 April 1983, p. 16; The Times, 3 September 1988, p. 3.
- 17.
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Experiences of forced labour in the UK food industry (May 2012), p. 41.
- 18.
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Experiences of forced labour, p. 40.
- 19.
The Independent, 4 November 2004.
- 20.
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Experiences of forced labour, pp. 36 and 48.
- 21.
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Experiences of forced labour, p. 26.
- 22.
The Times, 5 February 2003, p. 4. See also, The Guardian, 17 May 2003 and 29 March 2004.
- 23.
Anon, ‘Agricultural gangs’, Quarterly Review, 123 (1867), p. 189.
- 24.
Philip Conford and Jeremy Burchardt, ‘The return of the gangmaster’, History and Policy papers, September 2011. Available at http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-return-of-the-gangmaster.
- 25.
Don Pollard, ‘The gangmaster system in the UK: Perspectives of a trade unionist’, in eds, Stephanie Barrientos and Catherine Dolan, Ethical sourcing in the global food system (London, 2011), pp. 115–128 (p. 121).
- 26.
House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Gangmasters: Fourteenth report of the 2002–2003 session (London, 2003), p. 3. Available at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmenvfru/691/691.pdf.
- 27.
Gangmasters Licensing Authority, Annual Report and Accounts, 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015. Available at http://www.gla.gov.uk/media/1558/gla_annual_report_accounts-2014-2015.pdf.
- 28.
DEFRA, Agriculture in the UK 2015, p. 100. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/535996/AUK-2015-07jul16.pdf.
- 29.
NFU Briefing, End of Season Labour Survey 2015, pp. 2–3. Available at https://www.nfuonline.com/nfu-online/sectors/horticulture/nfu-report-end-of-season-horticultural-labour-su/.
- 30.
See, for example, Ben Rogaly and Kaveri Qureshi, ‘“That’s where my perception of it all was shattered”: Oral histories and moral geographies of food sector workers in an English city region’, Geoforum, 78 (2017), pp. 189–198.
- 31.
The Guardian, 11 December 2012.
- 32.
House of Commons debate, 20 June 2012, Vol. 546, Col. 260.
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Verdon, N. (2017). Conclusion: The Contemporary Agricultural Worker. In: Working the Land. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-31674-5_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-31674-5_9
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