A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by the BBC about jobs and immigration. It went on air the night our new prime minister was elected, someone who also happens to be our local MP, so I was able to send him a direct message that same night.
I said our eastern European colleagues are the lifeblood of our business and called for more joined up thinking between education and immigration in the food industry, otherwise we simply can’t maintain food production at the capacity we need.
The food industry employs millions of people worldwide, but with a global population expected to grow to almost 10 billion by 2050, that’s a lot of mouths to feed. However, with the image of working in food production still that of “cheap labour” or “unskilled jobs” – all terms I regularly hear from people who are responsible for employment or immigration legislation – we need to create a new narrative for the way we talk about food jobs to attract more people into the food manufacturing industry.
When researching this article, I was struck by a piece in the Telegraph by Patrick Holden, founder of the Sustainable Food Trust. While it was mainly about jobs picking on farms, something he said really struck a chord. Holden said: “The problem today is that we live in a society where almost everyone is completely disconnected from the story behind their food. They’ve no idea where their food comes from.”
We invite school children to visit Heck on a regular basis. I speak at careers conferences and we also have a school visits programme in place. We use these sessions mainly to explain to children where their food comes from, how it’s made and how there are fantastic career opportunities in this industry. We are always overwhelmed by their enthusiasm and also great ideas when it comes to food production.
Yet we don’t necessarily see a follow-through in terms of school leavers applying for jobs, despite paying well over the average wage, and offering attractive perks and ongoing training for personal and professional development.
Part of the problem is the language we use to talk about food jobs: ‘low skilled’ and ‘shelf stackers’, to name a few. What we also never hear in any dialogue about working in the food industry is ‘pride’ – pride in making food, or indeed harvesting or serving food. During covid, we celebrated people working in the sector as key workers. And yet we once again seem to be back to the image of low-paid and unskilled work, as we now fight with the likes of Amazon to recruit people.
We are really proud of the people we work with, whether it be the eastern Europeans who are like family to us, or the school leavers who now run their own departments at Heck.
I have grown up living, breathing, making and selling sausages. I wasn’t the most academic at school and most weekends I was helping my parents sell sausages at local shows. When our family had the idea to set up Heck, I jumped at the chance and went straight to the factory floor from day one, making and packing sausages. With a new brand, we all rolled up our sleeves, got stuck in and made sausages day in, day out. Even now, in busy periods, it’s all hands on deck if we need to get orders out. We all know the critical value of putting in a long day on the production line.
In my experience, most young people think they need to be a chef when they think of jobs in the sector, or that farming is all about throwing on some wellies and milking cows. We find the majority of our successful young people come to us because they have a family member or friend in the profession – otherwise they just don’t think about it as a viable career option.
A spotlight on the different opportunities and professions within all areas of the food industry is well overdue. We also need to explain about the exciting future of food – we have a high-tech vertical farm on our site experimenting with the future growth of sustainable greens, and we are constantly talking to innovators about how we can make and do things differently in the future, all of which can be translated into exciting careers.
We have a world-class food industry bursting with opportunities, but we need to continue building pride in it. We must put food production back on the education agenda. We need to excite and inspire school leavers to look at food production as a fantastic opportunity for a rewarding, if sometimes challenging, career.
And finally, we need to attract workers from abroad to come and do critical jobs to get food on the table – and make it easier for them to do so.
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