No, strawberry prices aren’t normal either. But without influential labor, we might not have had Norwegian strawberries in the store at all.
You’ve probably noticed it. Usually, strawberries are in high season in late June, and as prices increase, prices fall. This year is different.
A check round Nettavisen has done shows that prices are mostly around the 50 kroner basket and often a little more. At Coop Prix in downtown Oslo, we found strawberries at 59.90 on Wednesday afternoon.
– The reason why prices are higher than in a normal year is the corona virus. There is not as much access to pickers and thus the offer is smaller than in a normal year, says Silje Alisøy, communications adviser at Coop.
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Chartered aircraft to save the season
Per Isingrud is one of the country’s most producing strawberry farmers. To the field at Kløfta, he picks up hundreds of seasonal workers in a regular season that are ready for picking from mid-June.
This year, it has been more difficult to get seasonal workers here because of the corona restrictions. Now, 250 pickers from Vietnam, Thailand and Poland have arrived. Many of the pickers return year after year.
– It has resolved over time. But now they have to quarantine for ten days before they can start working. So they come, but come late, says Per Isingrud.
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Together with three other farmers, Isingrud chartered an entire aircraft from a Czech airline in early June. The farmers have to spend over one million kroner to get the seasonal workers to the country, and on June 9 a plane arrived from Vietnam. The price per passenger is NOK 7,458, which workers will probably have to pay back after the end of the season, writes Romerikes Blad.
CHARTRET CZECH REPUBLIC: Strawberry farmer Per Isingrud from Kløfta long feared that he would not have enough manpower for this year’s strawberry season. Of 150 Vietnamese workers who arrived by plane to Oslo Airport Gardermoen on June 9, 96 of them will work for him.
Photo: Hans Olav Nyborg (Romerikes Blad)
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– Then we would not have had strawberries
This helps explain the prices, says the strawberry farmer. High prices are related to the slow start of the harvest. In addition, it has been a smaller crop than usual, he says, and getting hold of Norwegian pickers has not been a real alternative.
– What would have happened if you had not got the foreign seasonal workers here at all?
– Then we would not have had strawberries.
The salary for hired pickers ranges from the minimum wage rate of NOK 123 to NOK 170 per hour, Isingrud states. The foreign seasonal workers are in the country for eight to twelve weeks, says Isingrud. Whether prices will go down eventually, the strawberry farmer will not speculate.
– But there are larger and larger quantities on the market, he says.
“With us, the berries cost 49.90, which now, at the end of June last year, but then prices fell by ten kroner at the beginning of July,” says Kristin Aarvaag Arvin, Kiwi’s communications manager.
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