Seasonal Labour, a Strategic Risk

Text: E Steenkamp

South Africa’s pome and stone fruit industries are a cornerstone of the country’s agricultural economy. Roughly 1,150 producers cultivate more than 54,000 hectares across mostly the Western and Eastern Cape, harvesting some 2.13 million tonnes of fruit a year and exporting over 1.02 million tonnes to international markets. The sector generates an estimated R24.6 billion in annual turnover and sustains around 66,020 full-time equivalent on-farm jobs — a figure that climbs by roughly 25% during peak packhouse season.

Mariettte Kotzé, Hortgro General Manager Industry Support Services, recently submitted a detailed report of industry workforce challenges to the national Department of Agriculture, following consultation with pome and stone fruit producers across the country’s major production regions.

“The message from growers was consistent: the availability of a reliable seasonal workforce is no longer just an operational detail; it’s a strategic risk to the industry’s future,” says Kotzé.

Deciduous fruit farming isn’t like other agricultural sectors, she explains. Pome and stone fruit have narrow, fixed production windows — pruning, thinning, harvesting, packing. Each stage must happen on time. Miss the window, and there’s no making it up later in the season. A delay during harvest or packing can permanently reduce fruit quality, shrink pack-out percentages and undercut export returns.

“Labour demand spikes sharply at specific points in the cycle. Harvesting and packing represent the two peaks, and it’s precisely during these windows that producers report the greatest strain in finding enough workers.”

The labour challenge isn’t a headcount problem. According to information gathered, growers consistently pointed to four interlinked requirements for a sustainable seasonal workforce: availability (enough people when needed), reliability (workers who show up consistently and return season after season), capability (the specialised skills built up over years of orchard and packhouse work), and lawful employment (operating within South Africa’s labour and immigration framework, including standards like SIZA).

“A workforce can look sufficient on paper and still fall short if attendance is patchy or if workers lack the experience needed for tasks like precision pruning or export-grade grading,” Kotzé explains. “These skills are built over multiple seasons and aren’t something a new recruit can pick up overnight, and short-term hiring can’t easily substitute for that institutional knowledge.”

These shortages are structural rather than seasonal blips. Producers cited several compounding factors: younger people migrating away from rural production areas in search of other work, inconsistent attendance among parts of the available labour pool, broader socio-economic pressures affecting participation in rural labour markets, and growing competition between producers for the same pool of experienced workers.

According to Kotzé, the regions affected aren’t uniform. “Some areas report relatively stable labour availability, while others are under considerably more pressure, but the overall trajectory points toward tightening conditions rather than easing ones. Activities most exposed include winter pruning, fruit thinning, harvesting, and the specialised grading and packing work that keeps export consignments up to standard.”

Migrant Labour

Legally employed migrant workers have become an important part of the picture, filling gaps where local recruitment can’t meet peak-season demand. “Crucially, Hortgro’s findings don’t suggest migrant labour displaces local jobs,” she says. “Producers reported they continue to prioritise local recruitment first, turning to documented migrant workers as a complementary source when shortages persist.”

Analytically, what stands out is the longevity of these working relationships. “Many migrant workers have been employed on the same farms for over a decade, developing exactly the kind of specialised skills, such as pruning, thinning, harvesting and export-quality packing, that take years to build. That continuity reduces recruitment costs for producers and helps maintain consistent quality standards through the season, benefits that are difficult to replicate with a constantly rotating workforce.”

According to Kotzé, producers aren’t asking for exceptions to labour or immigration law; quite the opposite. “The Hortgro submission underscores that the industry remains committed to full compliance, and outlines the practical steps growers are already taking, recruiting locally as the first option, investing in training, keeping employment records in order, verifying worker documentation, cooperating with Department of Employment and Labour inspections, and adopting mechanisation wherever it’s economically and practically feasible.”

That last point comes with a caveat, she says. “While mechanisation has helped reduce labour needs for some tasks, many of the most critical orchard and packhouse operations remain fundamentally hands-on and can’t be automated without compromising fruit quality or efficiency.”

What producers need most is legal certainty, and clearer guidance on how immigration requirements for documented foreign workers should be interpreted and applied, so that workforce planning can happen with confidence rather than guesswork. There’s also a practical bottleneck worth flagging: some local Home Affairs offices are struggling to process documentation for foreign workers within the timeframes that seasonal production demands, adding friction to an already tight system, she says.

Labour shortages in this sector are not limited to orchard work and affect the whole value chain. “Delays in harvesting or packing, shorten storage life, disrupt export programmes, and can erode the confidence of international buyers who expect consistent, on-time supply,” she says. “In an industry that competes globally on quality and reliability, that has knock-on effects for producer returns, rural livelihoods, and South Africa’s standing as a dependable exporter.”