The circa 2m furloughed and laid off hospitality workers are a key target for Home Grown’s Land Army initiative, which has been quickly rolled out to plug a potentially disastrous recruitment gap.
The farming industry believes it is down at least 70,000 pickers due to the pandemic and the national and international travel restrictions it has necessitated.
“It’s a big labour gap. We need the domestic supply chain to work properly. We can’t afford to have food rotting in the fields,” says James Patrick, the digital intelligence expert that designed the website.
“At the same time, we have got a large proportion of the nation’s work force displaced due to the same crisis, not least in the hospitality sector.”
“We’re trying to provide a platform to quickly connect the work force with farmers in a real time and geographically specific way and get them talking as a community to solve this problem.”
The website has been developed to rapidly deploy large numbers of workers to where they are needed without them having to travel long distances.
Farmers simply put themselves and their needs on a map while workers put themselves and their availability on the worker's section of the map.
Because of anti gangmaster regulations, Home Grown doesn't get involved in the recruitment process, it simply provides an open resource where farms seeking workers can make the public aware of their opportunities and where members of the workforce can make themselves publicly contactable.
Registered users of Home Grown can also login to access our secure forums and social platform to connect privately and co-ordinate the Land Army.
