The Murky Business Behind Britain’s Rampant Food Price Inflation
Brexit is forcing farmers to scour the globe for workers and it’s become a lucrative business for unscrupulous recruiters.
Workers on a farm in the UK.
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/BloombergFed up with life as a truck driver, Ermek reckoned it was worth paying about $2,000 in travel and visa fees for a job on a farm in the UK. What the 26-year-old from Kyrgyzstan didn’t expect was to be picked up at the airport, dropped in the English countryside after midnight and then given three days to master strawberry picking. He was fired after a month.
“I thought in Europe they valued their employees,” Ermek said from his home in southern Kyrgyzstan, where he returned last year. He declined to be identified by his full name for fear of reprisals from the recruiter. “They just abandoned us.”