It's a race against the vine as strawberry picking season kicks off in Tasmania without the usual plethora of internationals looking for work.
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Over at Wesley Vale, pickers have just this week begun the task of harvesting about 2000 tonnes of strawberry crop from horticultural company Costa's berry farm.
Cameron Folder is the regional manager for Costa Berries in Tasmania, and said the biggest challenge this year was sourcing labour.
"We're quietly confident that we're going to meet the challenge," he said.
"The industry's been working really hard with the government on trying to meet these challenges.
"Part of it has been the local employment and the other part of it has been sourcing some of our other labour which includes pacific island workers returning to Tasmania from last season ... It's really starting to firm up that we're getting closer to where we need to be."
Mr Folder said Costa had so far hired 69 Tasmanians out of a total of 405 local applications, but that he expected more hires as the harvest season hit its peak.
He said Costa was aiming to hire 900 Tasmanians, about 40 per cent of the total workforce needed over the berry harvest season.
"In terms of local employment, there's plenty of opportunity in the horticultural industry ... and plenty of opportunities for career development," he said.
We're quietly confident that we're going to meet the challenge.
- Cameron Folder, Costa
Blaine Astall began working at Costa in 2011, when he was 17-years-old.
"At the time I was just doing crop maintenance activities such as weeding and pruning," he said.
"Over the past nine years I've progressed to now be the position of raspberry farm manager."
He said there were no pre-requisites for those wanting to come and work on the raspberry farm, aside from being over 17 and physically capable of picking.
Minister for Agriculture Guy Barnett said berries now made up half of Tasmania's fruit produce.
"There will be a requirement in addition to the local workforce to have seasonal workers from the mainland," he said.
"We've signed an agreement with the federal government to also have access to our Pacific Islanders as well as part of our harvest strategy.
"Our priority is workers from Tasmania ... On the harvest Trail website ... we've got 450 jobs that have been registered for Tasmanians."
FAR AWAY FARMS
Mr Folder said he often heard that transport to Costa's farms was difficult for some people.
"At the moment we find that the majority of our workers tend to drive or share rides," he said.
"We do hear feedback from certain parts of the community that transport is an issue.
"We haven't worked it out just yet, but we're working very hard to make sure we fix that."
Mr Barnett said transport was part of the state's support package.
"We've got funding support for transport to get people from where they live - particularly the major population centres - to the workplaces.
"We're working through the details of that with the industry as we speak."