The early morning light in the fruit orchard is pale and cold. Twenty odd rows of raspberries reach out like green blue arms under grey skies. A row of caravans sits just beyond the field edge, corrugated roofs, no visible gardens, just gravel and damp. Here in Cambridgeshire, 28-year-old Timur (name changed) arrived from Kyrgyzstan in March, drawn by the promise of work. By June he was picking in a large commercial raspberry farm under the UK’s seasonal labour scheme.
“The water tap outside the caravan block rarely worked,” he says. “Sometimes I had to take a bottle of water with me into the field because I knew I would not have access when I needed it.”
His story is not unique. As the UK’s horticulture sector continues to rely on migrant labour, a less visible crisis is unfolding in the margins: one of water access, sanitation and dignified living conditions. In the fields that feed us, the irrigation systems work, the harvest is gathered, the produce shipped, but the workers behind it may struggle simply to turn on a tap.
The problem in plain sight
The central issue is stark. Seasonal and migrant farm workers in the UK face inadequate access to water, sanitation and humane living conditions even as they labour in water intensive agricultural sectors. Farms that manage tens of thousands of litres of irrigation water every day may count every drop of produce, yet the human water needs of the workforce remain poorly regulated, under monitored and in some cases ignored.
Investigations have revealed that workers on the Seasonal Worker visa (SWV) route for agriculture have reported accommodation “with no bathroom, no running water, no kitchen” (The Guardian). Official survey data show that in 2021, 83.5% of respondents said their accommodation provided adequate running water, meaning roughly one in six did not (UK Government Survey). This is set against a sector whose very viability depends on high volume water use for crops in peak harvest.
The issue is multifaceted. Access to running water in housing, access to rest rooms and drinking water in the fields, sanitary conditions after long days in the sun, cooling and hydration in hot weather all matter. Yet these aspects rarely feature in policy debates around labour rights or water justice in agriculture. Instead they are treated as marginal welfare issues or delegated to compliance checklists.
In a 2024 report covering 399 surveys and 83 interviews with migrant farm workers, the NGO Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) found that living conditions continue to carry significant risk, including for gendered vulnerabilities (FLEX Report 2024). In the UK’s larger scheme reviews, the structure of the SWV has been described as creating a state of “hyper precarity” for workers whose immigration status, housing and welfare protections are tightly bound to workplace and employer (Modern Slavery PEC Report).
It is in this context that the invisible drought emerges: not of water falling from the sky, but of rights, oversight and basic dignity.
Human detail, land detail
In the field early one June morning, Timur’s pick team was assigned to an outer block of raspberries about a 15 minute walk from the packhouse. There was no shade, and only one water cooler was positioned inside the packhouse. In the field no fresh drinking water station was provided. At midday he found himself drinking from his bottle and eating half picked raspberries when he felt faint.
“I asked the supervisor if there was a tap or a hose we could use,” he says. “He said it was not the pickers’ job to carry water.”
On the way back to the caravan camp after the shift, the worn concrete block shared by 80 workers had a communal cold water tap outside, but at times the water ran for only a few minutes before stopping. Many workers kept bottled water and rationed use, especially late in the season when block management said water bills were high.
On the farm side, the grower manages thousands of square metres of glasshouse or open field fruit cultivation, relies on irrigation, frost protection sprinklers, substrate flushing and large scale packaging. Water for production is quantified and audited for crop yield, yet the water for workers tends to be invisible. This mismatch exposes a clear policy and implementation gap: the farm business and sustainability metrics may overlook the welfare of labour.
One seasoned grower told me off the record that “we look at water budgets for crop, not so much for accommodation blocks, though we should.” The room for systemic neglect is wide.
Policy, agriculture, water justice
Agriculture in England alone occupies around half the land area and remains one of the largest users of abstracted water for irrigation. Under the Catchment Sensitive Farming programme, farms are encouraged to improve water use efficiency and reduce pollution, but no equivalent oversight exists for workers’ access to water (Catchment Sensitive Farming).
On the labour side, the SWV scheme allows workers to remain for up to six months in the UK in horticulture and poultry roles. Farmers have asserted that they cannot fill roles domestically in sufficient numbers (Government Review). But that same regulation means that workers are tied to sponsors, have limited rights and face obstacles in raising grievances (Nottingham University Report).
The water justice angle comes when you examine who gets counted, who stays invisible and who bears the cost of production without recognition of their rights. While regulation has focused on farm labour payment and housing audits, less attention has been paid to field level infrastructure such as drinking water provision, heat stress protection or sanitation after shifts.
In one striking example, a 2023 Guardian investigation into fruit picking camps found that workers had been reprimanded for eating fruit to quench thirst when no drinking water was provided (The Guardian 2023). That case goes to the heart of this drought. The deprivation is not just of water but of recognition that labour rights, water access and agricultural policy intersect.
The question then becomes: who is responsible for ensuring basic water access for workers when the crop that workers harvest depends on precise water management? Farm businesses may see land use, water abstraction, crop yield, labour supply and visa compliance as separate silos. But from the worker’s perspective, their welfare is embedded in the same ecosystem.
The numbers behind the story
The scope of the workforce matters. According to recent government surveys, 13,911 workers responded in the 2023 survey of the SWV route (42.5% response rate) (Government Survey 2023). In the 2021 survey, 83.5% reported accommodation with adequate running water (Government Survey 2021). While that is a majority, the implication is that roughly one in six of those guests did not have fully adequate running water in their accommodation.
In the wider academic literature, workers report health impacts: “Migrants who work seasonally in agriculture face living and working conditions that significantly impact their health” (Health and Human Rights Journal). Another survey found that the design of the SWV creates fears of job loss and discourages raising concerns (Nottingham University Report). On the welfare side, housing audits remain inconsistent and rely heavily on farm self reporting and operator checks rather than independent oversight.
On the production side, UK horticulture has relied on water intensive crops such as soft fruit and protected cropping. While precise figures for worker water use are not collated publicly, the mismatch between large scale crop water use and small scale worker water access is apparent in field visits and worker testimony.
Voices from the field
“I kept a half filled plastic bottle with me in the field because I learnt the tap might not work when I finished my shift,” says Timur. “One day I felt dizziness, someone else carried me to the packhouse and gave me water. If I had collapsed I don’t think anyone would have noticed for some time.”
Advocate Anna Smith of the NGO Labour Exploitation Support (pseudonym) comments: “We hear repeatedly that accommodation blocks lack easy access to running water, and field sites often have no designated refreshment or hydration points. In an environment where workers pick for long hours in heat, the failure to provide water and sanitation is a breach of dignity and a labour risk issue.”
Another worker, Cristina, aged 25 from Romania, told researchers that “you need to work like a robot, and what’s the point in breaking your back if after that you go back home and you pay for medical bills” (FLEX Report 2024).
These testimonials underscore that water access is not just a production input; it is a labour welfare issue, a rights issue and a matter of public interest.
Why this matters for climate resilience
When policies treat labour, water and agricultural production as separate silos, they miss the true cost of food and the resilience of rural systems. Climate change means hotter summers, more frequent heat waves, increased irrigation demands and higher stress on water resources. If workers in the fields are operating in sub standard living and working conditions, they will be less able to cope with the extra demands climate change places on supply chains.
From a water resilience perspective, the fields may have water for the crops, but the people behind the crops may not. That imbalance threatens both human rights and agricultural sustainability. As irrigation demands rise and labour shortages persist, the pressures on the workforce intensify.
At the same time the UK has commitments under human rights frameworks and labour law to ensure safe, dignified and adequately supported working conditions. The fact that many migrant workers are tied to limited rights visas and on short term contracts means they are less likely to speak out if accommodation or water access is inadequate. That lower voice labour condition reduces the system’s resilience and masks failures.
Water access for farm workers should be considered a key component of resilience planning, not just for the land but for the labour system. When fields go thirsty, crops fail. When workers go without water or sanitation, labour fails.
Counting the Real Cost
Back in the caravan camp, the humid June air sticks to the skin. After his shift Timur returns to a cold tap that runs intermittently. He showers, eats modestly and tries to recall how much he owes in travel debt and visa fees. He wonders how many litres of water his farm used in the last 24 hours to feed the harvest, and how much was available for him.
The crops are harvested, packed and exported. The irrigation system hums, the yield meets target. But the worker’s water remains uncounted.
In the embedded logic of agriculture we must ask: what is the true cost of our food when the workforce is not fully supported in the basic human right of water? The drought in the fields is not only one of soil or surface water. It is one of oversight, accountability and equity.
If we are serious about climate resilience, about human rights in supply chains and about agricultural sustainability, then we have to reframe worker water access not as a benevolent extra but as core infrastructure. Only then can we begin to fill the gap, not just in irrigation, but in justice.
