Farmers warn of food security impact from visa changes

Agricultural industries warn changes to working holiday visa migration policy could threaten crops and Australia's food security.

On Thursday, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke outlined Labor's migration policy, including an overhaul of the Working Holiday Maker visa system.

Farmers are coming into the Christmas harvest of popular fruits such as mangoes, lychees, berries and cherries, as well as the summer grain season.

While the industry is concerned they will not be able to find enough workers to pick crops to get them to market, the "one bright light" is that agriculture will be added to the skilled worker visa list.

Less incentive to go bush

Across the country, agriculture employs more than 250,000 workers each year according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Figures from the 2021 census showed people from cultural and linguistically diverse backgrounds made up 13 per cent of the agricultural workforce.

Backpackers on Working Holiday Maker visas wanting to stay for another year need to work 88 days in regional or remote parts of Australia.

Under the changes, visa holders would also have to enter a ballot, with the number of places capped at 45,000 — down from the 57,000 who qualified this year.

The number of places will be capped further to 5,000 for those seeking a third year, down from 31,000 this year.

Queensland Farmers' Federation chief executive Kylie Porter feared a lottery-type system would not be attractive to visa holders.

 "What we're doing is we're placing at risk Australia's food security over an issue which could be resolved in a way that's far more amenable to those regional and rural communities across Australia," she said.

"Christmas harvest periods are intense, and we absolutely rely on that workforce to be able to complete those harvests."

Kaya Barry is a senior lecturer at Griffith University who received an Australian Research Council fellowship to explore the contributions of seasonal migrants in Queensland's agricultural industry.

Dr Barry said larger farms secured most of their workers through the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme and Labor's policy change would have a greater impact on smaller operations.

"For smaller farms, particularly the family-run stuff … they can't guarantee the seasonal work is there year-round, and that's where the backpackers have filled those shortages," she said.

Dr Barry said PALM workers would not be able to replace backpacker labour on farms.

"It's really important to have highly mobile workers who are willing to just come and do two or three weeks and then move on to the next place and follow that harvest trail around the country," she said.

Dr Barry said it was also not feasible to rely on an Australian workforce.

"We don't have enough people living in regional and rural Australia to do all that work."

Industry needs workers now

Prior to Labor's policy announcement, the federal government had paused working holiday visa applications coming from 24 out of 29 countries.

Mr Burke said the time frame for processing these visas would now take three months; previously, it had taken days.

Head of Citrus Australia, Nathan Hancock, said the current backlog of processing applications is putting pressure on all industries.

"People have been waiting three to four months for their applications to be approved. In many of these industries, harvest is about to start in two weeks," he said.

"This just creates more angst and more concern for all of those industries that would normally rely on workers at this time."

With berry harvest underway in New South Wales and gearing up in Victoria and Tasmania, Berries Australia CEO Rachel Mackenzie warned workforce shortages could lead to wasted crops.

"You may have periods where you need quite a lot more workers than other periods … we need those backpackers to assist with surge capacity and be a complement to the existing PALM workers," she said.

"For some growers [fewer workers] might mean that they have to finish their season early, it may mean that they can't get their crops picked in time."

'One bright light'

The industry has welcomed the addition of agriculture to the skilled worker visa, with Mr Hancock calling it the "one bright light in all of this".

"It is positive to see that agriculture will be added to the [skilled worker] visa," he said.

But Mr Hancock is calling for more clarity on these changes, including specifically which types of workers will be added to the skilled worker visa.

"Hopefully that does, in my case, go down to horticulture … fingers crossed."