A DOCUMENTARY following the summer season in the berry fields of Scotland, due to be broadcast next week, will examine the importance of seasonal migrant workers from across Europe.

Scotland’s fruit industry has been one of the great farming success stories of the last twenty years. Polytunnel technology has turned a six week season into a six or nine month picking season generating more than £100 million for the Scottish economy. But if Brexit results in restrictions on the movement of labour, many farm owners and workers are asking: “Who will pick the berries?”

The programme visits the 100 acres of Wester Hardmuir farm near Nairn, which has been owned and run by Sylvia and James Clarke for the last thirty years, grow strawberries, raspberries and a range of other fruit and vegetables in forty-four polytunnels.

They have half a dozen full-time employees – some Scottish, some from Eastern Europe. Each picking season, from May to September, they bring in around twenty students from Poland, Lithuania and Slovakia to pick the crop of ten million berries, which is sold through their farm shop and through a wholesaler.

By contrast, the other farm featured, Castleton Farm near Laurencekirk, grows fruit on an industrial scale. Owned and run by Ross Mitchell, Castleton has built a small village to house the six hundred workers who come from across Eastern Europe to pick berries for up to nine months of the year.

The Landward special will air on on BBC Two Scotland on Wednesday October 18, at 8.00pm.