2021 remains a challenging year for the growing community with state borders opening and closing regularly upon each new COVID outbreak across the states. However, a constant remains with the firmly padlocked international border with no sign of reopening until a predicted date of ‘mid-2022’.
The wider horticulture production nationally is forecast to drop by up to 17% driven by a heavily reduced overseas labor supply. Typically, gaps are filled by the working holidaymakers and international student groups which have left in droves and not returned. Although domestic worker incentives have been seen throughout the states – a continued encouragement of recruiting Pacific Islands workers remains from the Federal and State Governments to help fill this gap.
The Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) and Pacific Labor Scheme (PLS) remain accessible options for vegetable growers to source migrant labor. Since the restart of these programmes at the end of August 2020, we have seen all 10 engaged countries re-engage with the scheme. On the PLS alone we have seen 2714 workers come into Australia to date.
The stability that bringing in workers provides for employers is a consistent message. Knowing that a dedicated, and suitably motivated, group of workers can come in for the crunch period of harvesting has provided significant comfort to those who recruited from this programme. This is being picked up in WA with a steady and growing engagement of workers over the past year.
With no major changes expected in reverting to pre-COVID labor markets for at least another year, there is value in considering this accessible overseas labor market as a part of your longer-term business planning.
For more information:
VegetablesWA
vegetableswa.com.au
