Cauliflower cutting

In Lincolnshire, we are indebted to the migrant workers from Poland and the Baltic states who come and pick our vegetables. They work very hard for low wages. No doubt they will be joined soon by some Romanians and Bulgarians. I drive past them at different times of the day and watch them work in the cold and the wet. I take my hat off to them. I thought the harvesting of cauliflowers was straightforward. Not a bit of it. There is a problem. If the entire field is mass-harvested in one go regardless of maturity, producers suffer huge waste. Use a labour force, where pickers inspect each cauliflower and carefully cut only those that have reached the right size, and producers face huge labour and time costs. Add the fact that it is increasingly difficult to find workers who are sufficiently skilled, with new employment legislation restricting working hours and reducing availability still further, it’s clear that the cauliflower harvesters’ lot is not a happy one.

However, there is a completely new way of harvesting. No more reliance on the vagaries of an expensive labour pool. There now exists a new market of high-tech harvesting.

In has come advanced GPS, x-rays and automated harvesting machinery. Selective harvesting of optimum-sized curds, with grading and mapping of other curds for later harvest completed at the same time is now possible. In has come night-time harvesting for the first time ever, reducing the energy required to chill the cauliflower. Most important of all, in has come an 80% reduction in producers’ direct labour costs, as well as a marked increase in yield, product quality and order fulfilment.

Is this progress? I am not sure our migrant workers will think so.