Our flower season is over for 2021 and it has been a surprisingly good year for us.
Our main fears were of the impact of Brexit of course. Recently we have been used to more than a hundred people coming for the ten week season from Romania. Our team worked hard though to recruit people from Boston and over the season up to 275 people have cropped for us and our neighbour at some time. These are mostly east European workers who have settled status here. In Cornwall, where the majority of the daffodil crop is grown, perhaps a quarter of the crop was not harvested as there were not enough pickers there.
Brexit, of course, made exports more difficult as well with customs declarations, expensive phytosanitary inspections and delays on both sides of the water of perhaps four days combined which is not a very good idea for a bunch of flowers!
A high percentage of daffodils have been exported to Europe and even USA in the past, probably exceeding 50 million bunches or twelve million pounds. This figure will certainly be reduced following the end of the transition arrangements.
Our croppers had a good season, though, with nearly half earning more than £500 per week and nine extra-ordinarily skilled and hardworking people earning more than £1000 per week for the season, even though one week was lost to poor weather. We try to grow thick crops of long stems where the croppers can achieve these high outputs. When a top cropper is in a good crop it is simply amazing to watch how fast the hands are flying and very often it is the fastest croppers that produce the best quality bunches.
It is gruelling work, sometimes cold and wet but sometimes gloriously sunny and most people will crack a joke at the expense of their aching muscles and I have nothing but respect for them.
I think we are all aware that there is sometimes a darker side to seasonal and gang work. We pay all our peoples wages into their banks with all proper deductions made and holiday pay accruing.
That has not always been the norm and today there are gangs operating fraudulently, paying cash and even collapsing their business to steal the VAT which can amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds. A cropper working for us pays perhaps £200-£300 in deductions and it is not surprising that we lost some to criminal organisations.
The organisations that police this crime seem to be under resourced. We had field inspections by the Gangmaster and Labour Abuse Authority along with the police which is very good but they seem to be unwilling to prosecute this sort of crime without the help of HMRC. We will be trying to engage with all the relevant authorities to encourage HMRC to survey the weekly remittances from the Labour provider organisations. This should very easily identify the businesses deserving investigation. Watch this space.