Paris (AFP)

"We are impatiently awaiting them": French farmers hope to quickly see the borders reopen for foreign seasonal workers, the shortage of labor worsening at the dawn of the full harvest season.

Farmers welcomed with relief last week Interior Minister Christophe Castaner's announcement of "additional waivers" to cross the border into a European country, including "compelling economic motive" for seasonal agricultural workers.

However, it is slow to materialize. Monday, 200 Spanish seasonal workers were turned back at the border with the Pyrenees-Orientales, confirmed to the AFP the prefect Philippe Chopin. The previous week, 73 Bulgarians - some of whom came to work in market gardening - had been turned back at Roissy airport.

So operators are stamping out.

Foreigners usually represent at least a third of the seasonal agricultural workforce, according to the first FNSEA union.

After closing the borders to curb the epidemic of Covid-19, the needs were only partially covered by the call to people on short work to join the fields, despite the influx of applications on the dedicated platform .

The farmers themselves were reluctant to recruit neophytes whose availability was not guaranteed beyond confinement.

To run its vegetable, arboricultural and vineyard holdings, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region is particularly impatient to find foreign workers.

Ordinarily, more than half of its seasonal workers are not French residents, according to the president of the Regional Chamber of Agriculture and vice-president of Chambers of Agriculture France, André Bernard: they are Europeans ( Spanish, Portuguese, Romanians, Bulgarians ...), but also Tunisians and Moroccans recruited via contracts from the French Office for Immigration and Integration (OFII).

Regarding these "OFII contracts", no exemption is expected and "around 5,000 people do not have the capacity to come" in PACA, underlines André Bernard. As for Europeans, "it is long before they can arrive. It has been announced, it must be unlocked quickly," he insists.

- "It's starting to get critical" -

Wednesday morning on RTL, the Minister of Agriculture Didier Guillaume announced an arbitration "in the day or tomorrow because we need this workforce to run French agriculture".

The derogations would concern "nationals of a member country of the European Union with an employment contract (...) with a farm established in France", he added.

"The conditions under which the exceptions to the movement restrictions at our borders could extend to seasonal workers are still being studied," the ministry of the interior told AFP.

Alban Lambertin grows table grapes in the Vaucluse. Thinking that the green light from the authorities was acquired, he wanted to bring in four Spanish Spaniards with a work contract as of Monday "and it didn't go as planned at all".

At the border, "they told them to go home and not to represent themselves," he describes. "They are not well-off people, it is a cost for them to go to France. I took charge of the hotel but it remains complicated."

All the more, he adds, that "the vegetation is ten, fifteen days in advance, it is starting to become critical" for the producers.

Also in Vaucluse, Frédéric Vève hopes to see around fifteen workers arrive from Andalusia to harvest his cherries and prepare his vines: "We are impatiently waiting for them. They know everything by heart and we appreciate them very much."

So far, Frédéric Vève had managed to meet his needs with locals. School supervisor, canteen worker, carpenter ... "I hired a dozen French people who had never seen vines in their life and who did a great job." But most people on short-time work will gradually resume their activity with deconfinement.

And, even with the best will, these novices did not match the productivity of seasoned foreigners, raising the cost of fruits and vegetables.

"When we are used to picking strawberries, we make the right choices, we put them in the tray in the right way ... Whoever disembarks gropes a little, there are fewer volumes and need to control more ", notes Raymond Girardi, vice-president of the Modef agricultural union, estimating that the harvest is" a third more expensive "with the neo-seasonal workers.

For him as for André Bernard, it will be necessary to upgrade this work in order to reconnect sustainably with the French workforce, and hope to claim the agricultural independence advocated at the top of the State.

© 2020 AFP