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Farming Today: Farming Today This Week

Farming Today This Week

17/07/2010

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, Farming Today This Week

Charlotte Smith experiences live as a fruit picker.

Charlotte Smith and the Farming Today team experience the life of a migrant worker, living in a caravan and picking and packing fruit.

Charlotte Smith and the Farming Today team have spent the last few days living in a caravan and experiencing the life of a seasonal farm worker: getting up early, picking and packing fruit, getting to grips with day to day life on the farm, and life in a different country.

The soft fruit industry in the UK is worth millions of pounds. The strawberry industry alone is worth Â£400 million and each year 650,000 tonnes of strawberries are picked in the UK. Each year, more than 21,000 workers from Romania and Bulgaria travel to the UK for agricultural work. The British public are, it seems, too posh to pick.

At the end of a week of hard grafting, Charlotte Smith reports from Windmill Hill Farm in Herefordshire and meets the workers who make sure our supermarket shelves are full of juicy, ripe fruit throughout the summer and reflects on what it is like to be work on a farm in the UK.

Presented by Charlotte Smith. Produced by Martin Poyntz-Roberts.

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