Brexit-era farm labor gap drew 32,000 seasonal workers from Central Asia
Why it matters: Reliance on six-month visas for Kyrgyz, Tajik, Kazakh and Uzbek workers undercuts promises that leaving the EU would reduce foreign labor.
British farms have increasingly turned to Central Asian workers to fill seasonal labor shortages a decade after the Brexit vote, reshaping who picks produce in England. More than 32,000 six-month seasonal worker visas were issued in 2023, with the biggest recruitment shares from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Before Britain left the European Union, many farm jobs were filled by workers from Eastern Europe, who later lost the automatic right to work in the country. Recruiters shifted farther afield after the war in Ukraine disrupted another source of labor. The trend has kept farms operating but exposed a gap between political promises to curb immigration and the agricultural sector’s dependence on foreign workers.