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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
World
Peter Craig & Jayke Brophy

Veg firm offering workers £62,000 a year to pick broccoli

A farm in Lincolnshire is offering wages of up to £240 a day to pick vegetables.

TH Clements and Son is recruiting cabbage and broccoli pickers with a wage the equivalent of £60,000 a year, Hull Live reports.

The high wage, of up to £30 an hour comes as farms and fresh produce companies face serious staffing shortages due to Brexit.

READ MORE: Sir Paul McCartney's touching gift to the people of Liverpool

The staff shortages have resulted in the family-owned firm, which also supplies Brussels sprouts and cauliflowers to major food suppliers and supermarkets, going on a major recruitment drive.

The roles at the farmland near Boston, Lincolnshire, are also all-year-round work instead of seasonal picking jobs.

In a post on social media, TH Clements said: “We are looking for Field Operatives to harvest our broccoli. Excellent piecework rates with potential to earn up to £30 per hour and all year round work available.”

Anyone interested in the work can find the offer on the company's Facebook page.

The Lincolnshire business is not the only one offering big pay rates to help with harvests.

Job site Indeed said this week that the number of recruiters boosting their salaries to help plug staff shortages is up to 75%.

Robert Newbery, regional director of the National Farmers’ Union, told the Mirror: "Brexit is certainly having an impact.

“The people that could move freely within Europe before now can't.”

The shortage of staff is impacting the amount of food making it onto supermarket shelves, with a number of different stores reporting shortages in recent weeks.

Fears over the shortage hitting the Christmas period are growing, with one industry insider warning of serious fallout.

Ranjit Singh Boporan, the owner of Bernard Matthews and 2 Sisters Food Group, which has a major factory in Scunthorpe, has warned of serious fallout.

He told Sky News: “There are less than 100 days left until Christmas and Bernard Matthews and my other poultry businesses are working harder than ever before to try and recruit people to maintain food supplies.”

“Nothing has fundamentally changed since I spoke about the issue last July. In fact, I take no pleasure in pointing out that the gaps on the shelves I warned about then are getting bigger by the day,”

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