With the apple harvest well underway in South Australia's Adelaide Hills, autumn is crunch time at Joe Ceravolo's orchards.
But the fourth-generation grower says getting enough people to pick is becoming a core issue.
"It's very hard to increase your labour force if you're using labour hire companies at these times of the year," Mr Ceravolo said.
"It's really been difficult to ramp up the operations for a two or three or four week period and start to actually harvest a lot more than you want to."
He said while his business, Ashton Valley Fresh, had several permanent employees, he needed more flexibility at the peak of the season.
"I found that was my biggest challenge last year," Mr Ceravolo said.
This month the federal government merged the Pacific Labour Scheme and the Seasonal Worker Program into one.
The revised Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme (PALM) promised to make things easier for employers and employees.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is responsible for the single system, with key changes including extending visa validity up to four years, multiple entry and more flexibility for workers to move around.
But Mr Ceravolo said for small businesses like his, the barriers to participating in the program were too great.
"With the schemes you need to house [the workers], make sure they have accessibility to shopping or the facilities that they need," he said.
After hearing positive stories about the scheme from other farmers, Mr Ceravolo said he was more interested than ever in taking up the opportunity to employ Pacific Islanders in the future.
"They are very hardworking, very dedicated and certainly willing to do the job — rain, hail or shine," he said.
Improving the scheme
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost 25,000 workers have arrived in Australia from the Pacific Islands.
While the majority of these workers were recruited through labour hire companies, a small number were hired directly by businesses.
Approved Employers of Australia executive officer Steve Burdette said changes brought in through the PALM scheme could help smaller growers.
"They've still got to work out all the details but the bottom line is portability can be done offshore before [the workers] even arrive," Mr Burdette said.
He said multiple growers could collaborate to share the planning and costs involved in recruitment and pastoral care for Pacific Island workers.
"Those growers can then move the workers between those farms," Mr Burdette said.
However, Mr Burdette said once fully implemented, the scheme could actually increase the paperwork burden for businesses, with the introduction of a grievance register and increased scrutiny on deductions.
He said he hoped to raise his concerns about these requirements at a workshop about the PALM scheme in Canberra this week.
"There is a lot more reporting that is required and we believe a lot of what that is doing is going to actually add some costs to the scheme.
"We need to work through some issues so that we can streamline the program and make it attractive to approved employers because once you get your head around it it's a good scheme."
Sharing knowledge on-farm
While some issues are yet to be ironed out, the PALM scheme is expected to increase training opportunities and improve cultural support for foreign workers.
This comes as a new Australian study has found Pacific Islanders employed by smaller businesses have a better experience than those working at larger companies.
Lead researcher Federico Davila from the University of Technology Sydney said on smaller properties, there was a two-way exchange of knowledge about agricultural practices, such as pruning, irrigation and chemical use.
"We spoke to 63 seasonal workers from Tonga, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands and found that about 46 per cent of all participants really took the skills and applied them in their home countries," Dr Davila said.
"Interestingly one of the things we found was that Australian employers learnt a huge amount about Pacific cultures — ways of knowing and ways of collaborating, through being exposed to what they do on the Australian farms."
Dr Davila said the scheme could be improved by formalising this knowledge sharing and recognising all agricultural work as skilled.
"This is actually an extremely skilled job in terms of the amount of hours, the physical and intellectual labour required."
