I.As a result of the Corona crisis, according to farmers’ president Joachim Rukwied, there will probably be a shortage of fruit and vegetables. The background is the lack of seasonal workers from Eastern Europe in the wake of the corona pandemic, he told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (Wednesday). Federal Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner (CDU) has therefore announced relief for harvest helpers from Eastern Europe, such as longer residence permits.
Rukwied said that field work and harvesting could not go as usual this year. Farmers are currently faced with the decision of whether to unsubscribe from seedlings.
“We have to change as consumers in the coming months,” said Rukwied. He also assumed that there would be price increases. The demand will also not be covered by imports, as there is also a shortage of workers in the fruit and vegetable growing regions in southern Europe. Federal government considerations of using asylum seekers or unemployed people in the fields would “only alleviate the labor shortage”.
Klöckner said in the ARD “Morgenmagazin”: “Farmers are in great need.” A harvest that does not take place today cannot be made up for. Therefore, she fears bottlenecks. Workers who are already present are therefore likely to stay in Germany for 115 days instead of 70 in the future. The earnings limit was also raised.
“Nobody knows who should do it”
The asparagus farmer Jörg Heuer reacted quickly: When the federal government announced last week that foreign seasonal workers would be refused entry due to the new corona virus, the 49-year-old quickly chartered his own plane. For a five-figure sum, he says, he brought in around 120 Romanians to save his harvest – and thus his business.
Heuer grows asparagus and berries on more than 100 hectares of land near Burgwedel in Lower Saxony, the second generation, the parents of the 49-year-old founded the farm in 1981. With the plane, he just averted a shortage of personnel during the harvest this year. “We can handle it,” he says. In the industry, however, there are significantly fewer harvest helpers than usual this year. Many tried and tested helpers have also canceled this time.
Asparagus is a luxury vegetable, you can live well without it, even if the “white gold” belongs to spring for many like the Easter eggs. But this year the asparagus is the economic basis of existence. “We live from these three months,” says Heuer about the harvest. “We can’t postpone that like fairs or a soccer game.”
Bauer Heuer expects to be able to harvest almost all of his crop. The prices have therefore so far been at the level of the previous year. “Nothing has changed there.” Holger Hennies, vice president of the rural people, the Lower Saxony Farmers’ Association, sees the lack of seasonal workers as “a real threat to their existence”. Lower Saxony can be seen as representative of asparagus cultivation, because nowhere else in Germany is more cultivated – around 27,500 tons of asparagus were fetched from the fields in 2019, a good fifth of the total German asparagus harvest.
Hennies emphasizes that quick solutions are needed to avert bottlenecks in the fields. The asparagus must now be harvested. But: “Nobody knows who should do it.” The same applies to the sowing of other vegetables, such as broccoli and cabbage.
