In his three decades of breeding strawberries and blueberries, Cristobal Picon has learned how to deal with a variety of climate problems – droughts, floods, winds, colds. This year, however, he is facing something that is coming his way – the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Every spring, the Picon fields on the Atlantic coast in Spain are usually filled with workers – mostly from Morocco and Romania, who harvest the fruits and pack them for delivery to stores. This year, workers are few, most locals, and Picon has no idea how to harvest.

“You can handle poor harvests, but when 80% of your production is ready and you can’t harvest it, then you feel powerless. I don’t know how it will end”, he said.

From Spain, through Germany and England, to Italy, farmers are racing to find people to work in the field and harvest fast-ripening fruits and vegetables, which often have to be harvested manually in a single window in just a few days. Usually, farms in Western Europe rely on workers from Eastern Europe or North Africa. However, because of the coronavirus, thousands of people stayed at their homes and border control stopped a small group of people wishing to travel.

Strawberries and asparagus are already rotting in the fields in Spain, Italy, France, and Germany. In the north, vegetable producers are worried about what to do when the spring and summer growing season comes.

Due to labor issues, some producers fear that urban buyers will face a shortage of fresh produce. Concerns are that even harvested crops will not reach consumers, as outdoor markets are closed and transport links are uncertain.

“There will be a shortage of fresh fruits and vegetables in the cities very soon”, said Sebastien Herault, a farmer from southern France. “Even those of us who can harvest have sales problems,” he adds.

France expects lack of around 200,000 agricultural workers this year. Coldiretti, an association of Italian farmers, estimates that there will not be around 100,000 workers in the country. Typically, there are 30,000 immigrant workers in Germany in March, rising to 80,000 in May, but far fewer arrived this year, says Agriculture Minister Julia Klockner. On Thursday, the country closed its borders for migrant workers outside the European Union’s visa-free zone.

“The labor situation along the entire food supply chain is under tremendous stress”, said Julia Klockner. “The number of workers from neighboring countries is declining rapidly”, added she.

With restaurants, hotels and many shops closed because of the pandemic, governments are hoping that people in those sectors or students who are not currently studying will fill the gap. French Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume appealed to everyone without a job to get involved, “so we can all eat.”

Germany has created a website that lists thousands of unfilled agricultural jobs. A similar initiative in Austria resulted in the registration of 7,000 people at the site of Eastern European collectors who returned home and the borders closed. The country’s government says the country needs three times as many people.

Still, clerks, students, and sellers in non-working shops are in cities, far from farms that need labor. Farmers are worried that they will lose their jobs after cafes, shops and schools open in a few weeks. Hiring experienced pickers, coupled with contact restriction rules, is likely to increase their costs and slow down the process, said Jack Ward, head of the British Growers industry group.

Some manufacturers do not expect government assistance. Meyerhof, a farm in West Germany, located near the border with the Netherlands, says that after a Facebook post, it has found 500 people who want to harvest asparagus. This is a huge manifestation of solidarity, for which we are grateful because we cannot do it alone, according to Ana Comp, the farm’s marketing manager.