It was always locals donkeys years ago ... but there were massive differences: Rural communities worked very local to where they lived, they often pitched in and helped farmers with their 'seasonal' harvests and got paid a bit and local produce and it was something that happened for set periods of a year. Difference now - produced is grown in mammoth quantities and exported and they might be called farms but they are huge enterprises - these need hundreds of pickers not a few dozen locals. Rural young people started to go to Uni's and then onto citys and towns and wanted careers, small fruit producers got snapped up by the big boys and repeat the previous paragraph. I said it on a previous post ... the massive producers rely on cheap labour and the margins are small per fruit but huge quantities and profits dictated by global cartels ... there is a trading mechanisim that sets global prices and this stuff gets shipped everywhere at pre-agreed proces. The businesses arecalled farms and farmers but its not your ruddy, red faced oik wanting 10 people to fill his tractor and trailer, its big busniesses and they will not and often cannot pay the wages that the average UK worker needs, ... well they could but the consumer would be paying quadrupal the price for their berries etc I used to work with Eastern lads and girls who worked here for part of the year, then onto forestry in some of the nordic countries (same market approach i.e. cheap labour as Swedes, Danes, Norwegians could not drop to those wages now). But believe me ... as Lithuania, Romania and other such countries become more rich and EU provides better infrastructure then they will also dry up as a source of cheap labour. Its already happening as the outfit I worked for is now in China, Africa, Mexico as its ripe for cheap labour ... anybody's fault? well yes ... all of us, all of us who want blackberries, strawberries, raspberries all year round, in plastic tubs for 99p at Aldi and Lidl's etc If we ate it seasonly and paid what it costs to produce properly i.e. with fairly paid employees and all rights that go with it then more UK nationals might see it as a viable job.