GRAIN growers across the Mallee are crying out for governments to let in overseas workers, as they face a second bumper season with no one to harvest their precious crop.
While the new agricultural visa allows those from Pacific Islands and ASEAN nations to come here to pick fruit, this is of no help to growers needing skilled grain harvesters.
Rod Gribble, president of the Australian Custom Harvesters Association, says there is an urgent need for skilled harvesters from grain growing countries.
“You don’t just chuck someone in with a three-day certificate to do heart surgery,” Mr Gribble said.
“Skilled workers are usually from Europe, or North America – they’re starting their own harvest now over there, and then they come here.
“Our question to governments on both sides is, if these people are fully vaccinated and tested before they come into the country, why can’t those people come in?”
Quambatook grower and chair of Grain Growers, Brett Hosking, says a worker shortage is always the biggest issue facing the grains industry, but for the second year in a row Covid is causing additional headaches.
“In the grains industry we have what we call PHDs – professional header drivers,” Mr Hosking said.
“Effectively they travel the world. They do the Northern Hemisphere harvest and then the Southern Hemisphere harvest.”
Header drivers don’t come in on the normal backpacker visas, they come in specifically for the harvest period, which is October to end of January in Australia.
“At the moment we’ve closed our international borders so there’s no visa category that would bring these workers in,” he said.
Even if a special working visa was created, there is still the hurdle of quarantine for 14 days.
“It would pose less risk if they could quarantine out the back of Swan Hill, with no one around,” Mr Gribble said.
Mr Hosking agreed workers would be better to do on-farm quarantine and, in some cases, on the job quarantine.
“We’d presumably have these people vaccinated, they’re coming into a fairly remote area, and they’ll be working solo alone in a header cabin or a tractor cabin,” he said.
“Header cabins aren’t that big – they’re not somewhere where you can host a house party.”
Moulamein grower and contract harvester, Mark Harris, has the daunting task of finding workers to harvest seven farms in the region.
“It’s not only my income, it’s all the farms that we harvest,” he said.
“It’s a lot of money at stake. I would probably be harvesting $20 million of grain.”
Mr Harris said he would like to see the issue at least looked at by state and federal governments.
“It’s just the number one issue of the whole business – finding skilled staff to operate such expensive machines and knowing how a harvest works, what’s required, plus getting the client’s crop off in a safe and responsible way,” he said.
“Unfortunately it’s not the sort of job that anyone can just go and do.
“If you were just harvesting your own crop, you could train a less experienced person up – but it’s long days, a long harvest, a lot at stake.
“If you can have guys that have done it before it runs a lot smoother.”
With millions of dollars in the balance, grain farmers are feeling more pressure than ever before.
“It is very stressful,” Mr Harris said. “It puts a lot of strain and makes the business a bit unviable, really.”
