The Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers (RABDF) has said that fixing the labour crisis in the dairy sector “isn’t something that can be done overnight”.
The UK milk producer charity hosted a roundtable at the House of Lords this week to discuss the growing labour shortages in the sector, with the aim of identifying ways to overcome it.
Chair of the RABDF, Di Wastenage, said that the issue cannot be rectified quickly, and that it will “take time to prioritise how we do this and the key stakeholders needed to help us get there”.
The roundtable event included representatives from across the dairy industry including government officials, UK collegeS, dairy farmers, human resource and people experts, processors, and an panel member from the Shortage of Labour in the Food and Farming Sector.
Wastenage said the roundtable was an “invaluable discussion” on to create a short and long-term pipeline of employees going into the dairy industry.
Labour shortage
Wastenage said it is clear that access to foreign labour is “something we still need in the short term” and said the RABDF will be reiterating the message in its submission to the Shortage Occupation List (SOL) review.
However, she said, access to foreign labour is not a long-term solution for the labour shortages in the dairy sector.
“For that, we need to look at a myriad of options from education in schools, brand building, skills development, attracting employees from diverse backgrounds, and setting up a dairy scholarship scheme, as examples,” she said.
“Labour on dairy farms is a paramount issue and we need this pipeline of employees to safeguard the UK dairy industry.”
Following the roundtable discussion, Wastenage said the next steps are to identify the key players and where the shortages lie.
This is something the RABDF hopes to achieve through its 2023 labour survey, which all dairy farmers are encouraged to complete before May 20, 2023.
The results of the survey aim to provide information on where the barriers to recruitments are and the extent of the labour problems on UK farms.
