UK dairy farmers warn of price rises amid chronic staff shortages

theguardian.com:

Dairy farmers are warning that a chronic shortage of workers is hitting milk production and further fuelling food price inflation, and are calling for urgent action to stop the situation getting worse.

Eight in 10 farm owners looking for workers said they had received very few or zero applications from people with the right experience or qualifications, in response to a survey by Arla Foods, the UK’s largest dairy co-operative.

Farmers are blaming Brexit and Covid for their recruitment problems, saying that the combination of the end of free movement for EU workers and the aftermath of the pandemic, along with other economic factors, is making it harder to find suitable staff.

Food producers have been warning for some time that huge labour shortages in agriculture have led to unharvested crops being left to rot in fields, and the killing of healthy pigs on farms because of a lack of workers at meat processing plants, and leading to disruption of the food supply chain.

In April, MPs on parliament’s environment, food and rural affairs committee reported that the sector had half a million vacancies last August, representing an eighth of all roles.

Almost two-thirds (61%) of dairy farmers reported it was more difficult to recruit workers than in 2019, as part of a survey of about a quarter of the co-operative’s members. In total, Arla’s 2,100 farmer owners represent about 30% of all dairy farmers.

UK milk production has already been hit by the labour shortage, the survey found, and milk volumes are currently about 3% lower than last year.

A small but significant number of farmers said they had responded to staff shortages by reducing output through cutting back on the number of milkings (4.3%), while some had reduced the size of