U.K. Farmers Say `Food Will Rot' in Fields Without EU Labor
- Environment Secretary reiterates plan for free-trade agreement
- NFU calls for access to EU workforce, new agriculture policy
Bentley Hall Farm in Wickford, U.K., on Aug. 15, 2016.
Photographer: Carl Fox/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
The U.K. agriculture industry will come to a standstill if the government doesn’t reach a deal that guarantees access to European workers, according to the head of Britain’s farming union.
“Without a workforce –- permanent and seasonal -- it wouldn’t matter what a new trade deal looks like,” Meurig Raymond, president of the National Farmers Union, said at a conference in Birmingham, England. “The lights would go out in our biggest manufacturing sector, food will rot in the fields and Britain will lose the ability to produce and process its own food. That is not what a successful Brexit looks like.”