New West Sussex farming leader highlights urgent need to find workforce for the future

Second generation farmer Andrew Strong says that finding a skilled workforce is one of the main challenges facing farming.

Tackling farm labour shortages is among the NFU’s key asks of all political parties in the in the lead up to the general election outlined in the NFU Manifesto.1

Mr Strong said other key issues include the upcoming review of farm assurance, rural crime, the future of farm support and securing the long-term future for Hailsham Livestock Market and a local abattoir.

In a general election year, Mr Strong added that it is important that the voice of West Sussex farmers is heard, including its important glasshouse sector.

Mr Strong experienced the impact of labour shortages on his own farm in 2022, when he and his wife Emma took the ‘heartbreaking’ decision to sell their breeding pig herd.

“I think labour is a huge issue – how to attract labour from abroad and how to encourage more of our domestic workforce into agriculture and keep them there,” he said.

Mr Strong recently took part in mock interviews with students at Plumpton College and said he was encouraged by the high standard.

“They were great and I only wish I could have taken one of them on. One student had turned down an international singing and acting scholarship to New York because she fell in love with cattle farming,” he said.

“We need a skilled workforce throughout the supply chain. A lack of staff is the biggest threat to the UK pig industry and to other sectors.”

Mr Strong’s father David started in 1955 with pigs, chickens and beef at Bolney near Haywards Heath, concentrating on pigs in 1980 with a breeding pig herd of 250 sows.

Mr Strong studied at Seale-Hayne College and came straight back to work on the farm in 1995.

He said: “I was born into wellies and careers advice was a waste of time. I was always going to be a farmer. It was just a question of which university to go to.

“I just love farming and the life it leads to.”

Mr Strong now farms 1,000 acres with eight different landlords on a range of different arrangements, as well as two contract farming arrangements.

Looking back on the decision to sell the breeding herd, he said it was the right thing to do due to the impact of price pressures and labour shortages.

“The farm had started ruling us, rather than us running the farm. We had been supplying 140 pigs per week, mainly direct to local retailers, and that’s left a big hole for them to fill,” he said.

Two new finishing sheds were erected and Mr Strong now contract finishes pigs for a farmer in Devon. The farm’s grain is milled for pig feed, while the slurry goes back on the land. On the arable side he grows milling wheat, oats on a Quaker contract, feed barley, feed wheat and oilseed rape.

Mr Strong said he was looking forward to his new role with ‘nervous apprehension’.

“Having been to a couple of NFU council meetings, it’s amazing to watch what the NFU does for farming.

“The deal for sugar growers and the court case on avian influenza compensation are two recent examples,” he said.

The NFU Manifesto calls for a minimum five-year rolling seasonal worker scheme, with suitable length visas, no wage differential from the National Living Wage or unrealistic cap on worker numbers, and implementation of the recommendations of the Independent Review into Labour Shortages in the Food Supply Chain.

Amongst the other asks in the NFU Manifesto is a consistent and coordinated response to rural crime across government and police forces, including fair funding for rural policing, a dedicated rural crime team in every police force in the country and the formation of a cross-departmental rural crime task force to address the failures in dealing with rural crime.