Fifth of Northern Ireland farm employees are EU migrants

The research has been published by the Department of Agriculture. It used the agricultural census to establish that the vast majority of NI’s 49,000 farm workers were self-employed owners, business partners and spouses. Of the about 7,000 paid employees just over 1,400 were migrant workers, almost all from the EU. The department also surveyed 609 businesses and found that 65% had no migrant labour. Of those remaining, 13% had only non-seasonal migrant labour, 15% had only seasonal migrant labour, and 7% had both non-seasonal and seasonal migrant labour. Read more here