Foreign staff have ‘changed our lives’: Scottish farmers fear for future after changes to skilled worker visas

A group of dairy cows are grazing on a grassy slope overlooking the Irish sea, a picture-postcard scene that wouldn’t be out of place on a VisitScotland advert.

These are just some of the 1,200 Holstein-Jersey cross cows kept at Dourie Farm, perched on the hill above Port William in Dumfries and Galloway in the south-west of Scotland. The area is known for its mild, moist climate, thanks to the warm air brought across the Atlantic by the Gulf Stream.

The herd – one of the largest in Scotland – produces about 30,000 litres of milk each day at the farm, which is owned by brothers Rory and Gregor Christie. The cows are able to graze outside all year round, producing fat- and protein-rich milk that is made into cheddar cheese down the road in Stranraer at the creamery, owned by the French dairy company Lactalis.

While there have been significant advances in mechanisation since the Christies’ grandfather founded the farm in the 1950s, producing milk remains labour-intensive and the cows are milked twice a day, in the early morning and again in the afternoon.

While the region’s climate is ideal for dairy farming, its isolated beauty comes hand in hand with a shrinking population. Most of the hundreds of lorries trundling along local roads are just passing through on the way to – and from – the port at nearby Cairnryan where ferries leave for Belfast.

“Three, four years ago, I was absolutely at the end of my tether,” says Rory, looking across the green fields of his farm. “I couldn’t find skilled workers and we got to the decision that we were maybe going to have to sell our cows.”

The survival of the herd came from an unlikely location: the Philippines. Unable to find staff in the UK, Christie decided to begin the costly and laborious administrative process of bringing foreign workers to the UK on skilled worker visas.

The first two Filipino staff arrived in early 2023, which Christie says has been “literally life-changing”. Others have since followed, and Rory and Gregor now employ four other Filipinos and one Hungarian man to tend to their dairy herd and their pigs.

Word spread locally and several other farmers who had tried, and failed, to hire reliable British workers also decided to look for help abroad. A couple of dozen Filipinos are now employed across the region’s dairy farms, alongside other foreign workers.

The farmers of Stranraer tell of the positive impact on their working and family lives as a result of foreign workers, but this boost could soon come to an end.

In July, the government removed the jobs farmer and agricultural contractor from the skilled worker visa list, amid a tightening of the rules as the Labour government aims to bring down the number of people arriving in the UK and reduce reliance on overseas labour.

Workers entering the UK through this route are now required to have the equivalent of degree-level qualifications, which is level six in what is known as the regulated qualifications framework (RQF), and farm work is considered a medium-skilled job.

Even though just a few hundred farm workers have entered the country each year on skilled worker visas, the government has closed this route for arrivals.

A government spokesperson said: “We recognise the vital role that skilled workers play in supporting the UK’s agricultural sector, including dairy farming. The government is committed to reducing overall migration over time and ensuring that our immigration system works in line with domestic skills development.”

The move has raised concerns at farms in Dumfries and Galloway and beyond. Dairy farmers have been warning for several years that long-running worker shortages have been exacerbated by Brexit and the pandemic, and have now become chronic.

In the most recent annual survey of milk producers by the dairy cooperative Arla, 84% of farmers said they had received very few or zero applications from qualified people when advertising job vacancies.

The industry has been working on education programmes in schools and colleges to promote dairy farming as a career, according to evidence given to parliament by the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers (RABDF). It found that three-quarters of farmers employing foreign workers did so because they couldn’t recruit in the UK.

A separate poll commissioned before Brexit by the RABDF found that only 4% of UK adults would consider key aspects of working on dairy farms acceptable to them personally.

Local farmer David Drummond says recruiting staff has been “the greatest challenge” to his business in the past 20 years.

“Staff turnover has been demoralising. Most of the workers have left with no alternative employment in place, the majority without the intention of getting further work,” Drummond says.

“The business was built by our grandfather and father,” says Gregor. “Some 30 years ago we had a workforce of about 50 and they were all local, every single member of staff. Why aren’t we doing that now? Because the workers do not seem to be there; they do not want to work.”

Hiring foreign workers “is not our first choice”, adds Rory. “It’s expensive, it’s difficult, there’s a degree of risk involved”.

He calculates he has paid £10,000 for every foreign worker he has brought to Britain, to cover the cost of their visa and health checks, on top of several thousand pounds to set them up working in the UK. His workers are paid an annual salary of more than £40,000 and given accommodation on the farm.

“It’s not cheap, that’s for sure. But they’re skilful and they’ve made my life personally better because I’ve got less worry,” Rory says.

Benjie Yap, one of the first two Filipinos to arrive with the Christies, says his own life and that of his family has been improved by the offer of a job in Scotland.

A youthful-looking 50-year-old, in a hooded sweatshirt and black baseball cap, Yap has settled into life in one of the farm’s cottages and isn’t fazed by starting morning milking at 4am, even in the depths of the Scottish winter.

“It’s hard, but you have to have the passion and love for the job or you won’t last,” says Yap. “We are really happy to be here and we are trying our best to help the farm to perform well, to the best of our knowledge and abilities.”

The knowledge brought by Yap and his colleague Milo Sollerano include years of experience, gained from agriculture studies in the Philippines and previous jobs in the dairy industry in New Zealand.

Like many overseas workers, Yap sends about half of his monthly wage back home to the island of Mindanao to support his wife and three children, all of whom are now studying, and who he only sees for a month each year.

“It’s very hard but I am doing this for their future,” he says. “Our first priority, working abroad and being out of our country, is to help our family.”

The workers were hired in the Philippines by international recruitment firm CAS Recruitment. It has found staff for companies in a range of sectors for a quarter of a century, but only started operating in the UK after Brexit, which brought to an end freedom of movement for EU citizens.

The departure of European workers after Brexit and the pandemic “left a massive labour crisis in the food sector all the way from farm to fork”, says Andy Backhouse, the UK client services director at CAS Recruitment. He has helped 36 Scottish farms to bring foreign workers to the UK since 2023. “Prior to Brexit we did not understand how big the problem was.”

In the new year, Rory will begin the process of extending Yap’s visa, which is due to expire after an initial three-year period. Longer term, he’s concerned how his farm will cope when Yap and the other Filipinos decide to retire or return home.

Industries which are struggling to find domestic staff to plug the gaps can try to provide evidence to the government’s migration advisory committee (MAC), which can decide to issue visas to jobs which are assessed as requiring lower qualifications.

Rory and the other farmers of Stranraer intend to bring their case to the MAC before it next sits in December. They warn that the UK’s food security and domestic supply of milk and other dairy products will be at risk if the visa rules are not relaxed.

“The creamery is probably the biggest employer in Stranraer. So all of this has consequence. The consequence is that we are supporting an ecosystem of employment,” says Rory. “Farming constantly delivers for society, and we can do cheap food. But do not take the tools away from me, and the tools are people.”