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3 mins
Agriculture: labor shortage worsens
Agriculture: the labor shortage is getting worse – (France 2)
Farmers are struggling to find workers. Representatives of the sector assure that 30% additional students should be trained.
Near Calais (Pas-de-Calais), a plot of land is abandoned due to lack of resources to cultivate it. “We stopped the activity because we no longer had staff.”, indicates Damien Van Haecke, farmer in Sangatte (Pas-de-Calais). According to him, this shortage has worsened over the years. The farmer could no longer find candidates to grow and then sell the strawberries. The lack of labor weighs on all its activities. In the middle of the potato harvest, his farm operates with three employees, when it needs double that number.
More than 15,000 positions to fill in Hauts-de-France
It says it offers training for beginners, as well as attractive salaries. How to explain this shortage? More than 15,000 positions are to be filled in agriculture, in Hauts-de-France alone. For representatives of the sector, 30% more students should be trained in agricultural high schools. In a class in Pas-de-Calais, two out of three students are the children of farmers. The school is banking everything on newcomers.
