Allowing overseas workers to complete their quarantine on-farm would save money and time and help ease the urgent worker shortages the agriculture sector is facing, says Orange orchardist and NSW Farmers Horticulture Committee Chair Guy Gaeta.
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"What better place to quarantine than on the farm," he said.
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"You're away from everybody, you could be working on the farm metres away from anybody else - I think it's a workable plan. And it doesn't cost you as much to do it."
Overseas farm workers travelling to work in NSW as part of the Pacific Labour Scheme and Seasonal Worker Program are currently subject to mandatory hotel quarantine that costs employers a NSW government-subsidised rate of $1500 per person.
"That's not much for one, but when you've got 50 ... that's a lot of money," Mr Gaeta said.
"And when you have them in Orange for such a short time, like with the cherry harvest it goes for about five weeks, that'll probably pay for the picking of the crop."
NSW Farmers has joined the National Farmers Federation in calling for on-farm quarantine arrangements in order to get workers on farms in time for summer harvests.
The organisation says mandatory hotel quarantine is creating a 'bottleneck' in the agriculture sector and it wants to see a limited pilot of on-farm quarantine for 200 agricultural workers from low-risk countries to begin once 70 per cent of the adult population is vaccinated.
"The hotel quarantine system in NSW is causing unnecessary delays to the timely movement of workers to farms," NSW Farmers President James Jackson said.
"The availability of hotel quarantine places in NSW is limited and further constrained by Sydney's disproportionately high intake of returning residents.
"We acknowledge the subsidy the NSW Government has put in place to halve the cost of hotel quarantine applicable to agricultural workers, but the cost remains prohibitive to many farm enterprises, particularly the smaller ones."
Mr Gaeta says the Orange cherry harvest typically employs 1200-1500 workers in picking and packing, with 90 percent from overseas.
With just eight weeks to go until the harvest begin he says growers are getting worried.
"This year, if it doesn't get any better, it's going to be impossible," he said.
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