Why UK farms are recruiting fruit pickers from 7,000 miles away

theguardian.com:

As a Guardian investigation reports that Indonesian workers picking fruit for leading UK supermarkets have ended up with debts of up to £5,000 for a single season, we look at what is driving a crisis in British agricultural labour and how exploitation can be avoided.

A shortage of farm workers created by Brexit led to 8,000 tonnes of berries going unpicked last year. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine only made the shortage more critical – Ukrainians made up two-thirds of all workers arriving on seasonal worker visas in 2021, with almost 20,000 working on British farms. When war broke out weeks before the picking season was due to start, recruiters had to look beyond Ukraine, with a rise reported in farm workers arriving from Indonesia, Nepal, Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

A great deal. In 2019 about 2,500 workers came to Britain on a pilot of the seasonal worker visa. This year the number is expected to be 40,000, with many coming from distant countries and little funding or infrastructure to investigate the circumstances of their recruitment.

AG Recruitment, one of only four licensed agencies allowed to recruit under the UK seasonal worker scheme, was tasked with filling a shortfall in farm workers quickly this year, including in Indonesia.

With no previous experience in Indonesia, AG sought help from the Jakarta-based Al Zubara Manpower, which appears to have gone to brokers on other islands who charged exorbitant fees to the workers they introduced.

The managing director of AG, Douglas Amesz, said he personally recruited candidates in Jakarta for Clock House farm in Kent, that applications and visas were only processed by AG, and he was unaware of brokers levying charges. He said he was “extremely concerned to learn of