Farmers in northern Greece are desperately looking for help abroad to harvest fruits and other crops as local youths scorn farm work and once-reliable Albanian farmers now prefer to seek work in the European Union’s northern countries.
Farmers’ unions in the peach-dominated Imathia and Pella regional subdivisions say they will welcome the disaster as they will at least be compensated for lost produce. These two regional divisions alone require 30,000 seasonal workers to pick peaches, as well as apples, cherries and kiwis, which are grown and canned in the region.
Farmers say delays in issuing visas to foreign workers, mostly from South Asia, could result in a lost season. They are also looking to countries like Egypt, Pakistan, Albania, North Macedonia, Thailand and even Ecuador and Peru to import seasonal workers.
It is worth noting that before the migrant crisis of 2015-2018, more than 100,000 labor migrants from Asia and Africa worked in Greece in agriculture. However, in the above years, most of them moved to the countries of Northern Europe and Britain, where they pay much more for work, and if they are lucky (or for a good bribe to an official), they can get into the refugee support program, where they do not need to work at all.
After their departure, there was a sharp shortage of agricultural workers in the country. And now the farmers are forced to ask the authorities to bring them foreigners or … adequately pay local wage workers.
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