THE UK watercress season got underway this week, despite the cancellation of the Alresford Watercress Festival to herald its start and more serious concerns over a lack of labour.

Longstanding seasonal employees from overseas, many of whom have worked with The Watercress Company for 10 years or more, have been unable to come due to movement restrictions caused by Covid-19.

As a result, the ‘class of 2020’ who have stepped into the breach have a range of backgrounds from sport instructor, designer, event electrician, student, landscape gardener, mechanic, builder, podiatrist to sailor.

Tom Amery, MD of The Watercress Company said: “We realised quite early on in the lockdown that we were going to have issues with the harvest of watercress and our other salad crops if we didn’t quickly source the 25 staff members needed from other backgrounds.

“We were lucky as in both Hampshire and Dorset local people who had been furloughed or who were self-employed applied to work and underwent a rigorous period of training in the build up to harvest starting.

“We had a 10 percent drop out in the first couple of weeks but after that everyone else settled in and now appear to be loving it. For most it’s a complete change from their normal lives, while we haven’t had to train a fresh group of recruits for years, but I think we are learning a lot from each other.”

Split between Hampshire and Dorset, The Watercress Company owns over 50 acres of watercress beds.

The Watercress Company anticipates harvesting over 600 tonnes of the super green between now and late October supplying over 4,000 stores around the country.

40-year-old James Brice from Sydling St Nicholas, Dorset is one of the new recruits assisting with the harvest and irrigation of the land salad crops also grown by The Watercress Company.

He said: “Three months ago I would never have dreamed I would be standing in a watercress bed wearing PPE helping to bring in the harvest!

“It’s certainly very different to my normal role as a fitness instructor and it’s opened my eyes as to how our food is grown and gets onto the supermarket shelves.

“I originally saw it as a temporary role, offering to help because I recognised how important it is to harvest our crops, but I have actually found the work complements my own fitness business.”