Bumper season ahead with no pickers of the crop

A year ago, fruit growers on the Granite Belt in southern Queensland watched their orchards wilt and die in drought. This year, they can hardly pick the crop.

English backpacker workers Ellenor Smith, 24, and her partner Kilian Hoeckman, 26, from Belgium, with stonefruit grower Angus Ferrier, right. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

A year ago, fruit growers on the Granite Belt in southern Queensland were watching their orchards wilt and die as the region’s record drought bit hard.

This year, decent rainfall has led to a surge in spring growth and the Stanthorpe stone fruit harvest is almost ready to begin.

The struggle is finding enough willing workers to pick the crop.

Of the usual 144,000 backpackers in Australia at this time of year, an estimated 70,000 remain, and many of them are set to return home before Christmas.

While Australia’s unemployment rate has reached its highest level in more than two decades, farmers eager to employ workers to harvest their crops are scrambling to find willing hands.

Stonefruit grower Angus Ferrier, who has an 18,000-tree orchard near Stanthorpe, has found eight backpackers to work for him. “The heat and wind we were facing this time last year, on top of a winter of zero rain, (meant) the ground was just unworkable and the trees were half-dying,” he said.

“This year, there has been enough rain that the trees have jumped out of the ground in spring and are looking OK. But there’s still a level of uncertainty around our level of production this year.”

Ferrier with Belgians Smith and Hoeckman as they walk along the Stanthorpe property in southern Queensland. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

English backpacker Ellenor Smith, who has been in Australia since December, spent several months working in far north Queensland on an avocado farm before moving to Stanthorpe to work for Mr Ferrier.

“We’ll stay here till the end of the harvest in December and then I think we’ll stay in Stanthorpe to work on other farms,” she said.

“They’re looking for so much at the moment that if we don’t stay, it would be silly because there’s guaranteed work here.”

The squeeze on workforce numbers is set to peak in December when the district is in need of hundreds of new employees every week and more intensive crops are ready for harvest.

Mr Ferrier, the Granite Belt Growers Association president, praised the Queensland government’s latest $1500 incentive to lure jobseekers to regional areas.

“It’s a big deal for someone to up stumps, potentially break a rental agreement in a city and move to a regional town,” he said. “I think that’s a good ­incentive.”

National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Maher said workforce rates had been a constant issue for the industry but had been greatly exacerbated by the pandemic.

“No one has ever faced this, where there’s just no one coming in to help pick crops,” he said.

When the Granite Belt harvest reaches its peak in November, the Victorian table grape and fruit harvest will be ramping up, creating fears the workforce will be stretched to thinly.

The NFF has recommended a list of measures to the federal government, including relocation incentives, visa relaxations and guaranteed freedom of movement between states for agricultural workers.

The NFF hopes Australians who lost their jobs because of the pandemic will seize the opportunity but Jobkeeper and Jobseeker welfare payments have complicated the matter further.

“It’s no surprise that they would think about that before going to apply for other jobs,” Mr Maher said.

“Having said that, the government needed to put those things in place.” A parliamentary inquiry has recommended that the government allow people on un­employment benefits to harvest crops without their payments being deducted.

Mr Maher said exploitation of backpackers from a minority of farmers had played a role in deterring Australians from taking up the jobs on offer but was not representative of the industry.