Sutton St Edmund farmer is cutting free range egg production due to shortage of livestock workers following Brexit
A free range egg farmer says he is having to cut production due to a skills vacuum in the industry.
Tony Gent says he is scaling back his production due to a shortage of skilled livestock workers following Brexit.
Avian flu and rising costs have been blamed in the national media for the shortage of eggs in supermarkets.
But the Sutton St Edmund farmer says that the problems are down to the Government failing to put in place long-term plans to train up workers before the country left the European Union.
Mr Gent - who has tried to recruit locally without success - is calling on the Government to promote agriculture as a career and to properly invest in training.
He said: “What has happened is that Brexit has caused a vacuum which means that the workers are not there and those that are left can cherry pick the jobs.
“Working with poultry is down the list because of the unsociable hours.
“All of us in the industry we desperately trying to source local workers but they are not there.
“This should have been done over ten to 15 to 20 years.here has been no thought or planning. In the short-term I think we have got to go back to allowing more workers in to fill the vacuum but in the long-term we have got to get better at fomulating plans that young people look at agriculture and go into it as a career.”
Arable farmer Mr Gent and his two sons diversified into egg production 20 years ago.
They had 64,000 hens at their peak but are now rolling back to 32,000.
He said that latest figures show that there is a relativity between production cost and price received which has not changed over a number of years.
Mr Gent says that his team is short of two to three skilled people.
The farm is now halving its production of eggs - which amounts to 15 tonnes a week.
Mr Gent said: “Livestock is a seven days a week operation.”
Many supermarkets are bringing in imported eggs from other countries which do not have the same standards - and with that costs - as British producers particularly following the Salmonella issues in the 1980s.
Mr Gent said: “We have put in place high standards and quite rightly so. Free range eggs are now 50% of the market. The supermarkets” have worked wut us to expand and that was good for them and us.
“They are now being forced to abandon that and import eggs produced with lower standards.
“On one hand the Government want to encourage us but on the other they put in place things like that silly deal with Australia. They undermine what we have built our reputation on.”
The Government has been working on trade deals with countries which do not following the same safety and animal welfare standards.