Bilwisheim (France) (AFP)

In Alsace, many idle people fly to the aid of asparagus producers in need of arms, but many plots should not be harvested, for lack of buyers for this usually prized vegetable.

Folded in half, Aurore Schneider searches the earth with her gloved hand to dig up the precious vegetable, which she places in a crate.

Acting waitress, the young woman has swapped the tray for the asparagus gouge, a tool with a long, sharp handle that she is handling for the first time in her life, outdoors and without a mask.

"It allows me to do something during confinement, it saves me from staying at home and in addition it helps and it allows me to earn money," she explains.

"I was going around in circles and the days were quite long so after 15 days, I wanted to go out and in addition it was an opportunity to be useful", abounds, a few rows further, Robin Ruhlmann, driver of work in a company closed for two weeks, with partial unemployment.

In the operation of Jean-Charles Jost in Bilwisheim (Bas-Rhin), these neo-seasonal workers replaced, following a call for help launched by the agricultural unions, the usual workforce. It is essentially foreign and blocked this year at the borders. But the newcomers should not be enough to save the season.

- "Not the same productivity" -

Franck Sander, President FDSEA of Bas-Rhin, says it bluntly: if calls from people offering their services have flocked in recent weeks to farms, "we are not going to replace the usual seasonal workers, Romanians, Poles: it is not not the same productivity, we need to supervise them more. "

He insisted on the essential precautions faced with the risk of spreading Covid-19, especially when seasonal workers, spaced enough in the fields, work together on a calibration tool.

However, beyond the problem of manpower, there is above all for producers that of outlets.

Usually, Alsace goes into a sort of trance in the spring, the asparagus occupies the conversations, invades the markets and the gourmets watch the launch of the "asparagus menus" in the restaurants, offering asparagus soups and the seasoned vegetable with various sauces .

- Markets and restaurants closed -

"Usually, I am robbed. Currently, we harvest 250 kg per day and by pushing in all our customers, we sell them, but we are alone on the market", said at the end of March Mr. Jost, whose vegetables, rooted in sandy soil, are earlier than other Alsatian asparagus.

"A normal day, I make three tonnes a day, and there I barely sell 250 kg ... Asparagus is not a basic product", he analyzed, also deploring the closure of the markets after that of restaurants.

He who chairs the association of asparagus producers of Alsace intends to harvest only 30 to 40% maximum of his vegetables, for lack of sufficient "sales potential".

René Jenner, small producer in Lampertheim, decided to harvest his asparagus with the local workforce who mobilized to help him, and wants to believe that "the people of the city will pass", even if "the black point , these are the restaurants: we don't know when they will reopen. "

His colleagues from the Frick farm in Gundolsheim (Haut-Rhin) had taken a radical decision: "Nothing will be picked up during the confinement period", explained Muriel Frick a few days ago.

"I do not want to be responsible for having an employee in the hospital or who dies," she justified, describing older, loyal seasonal workers, teachers or retired gendarmes.

"We are going to recover because we are a certain age, the investments are behind us, but young people cannot do the same," noted the farmer, saying that they have to refuse "every five minutes" proposals of arms of a hairdresser, an educator, parents or restaurateurs looking for work for their children or their employees.

But since then, the Fricks have changed their minds, also faced with numerous calls from loyal customers eager to come and buy asparagus on the farm.

"We expect to start harvesting around April 15 with four people, compared to 20 usually," on a quarter of the total area, says Frick.

A number of seasonal workers reduced "to the strict minimum" which should in particular make it possible to limit contact in the vehicles that will take them to the fields.

© 2020 AFP