Thai berry-pickers are welcome in Finnish Lapland

Many can earn a year's income from picking blueberries and lingonberries

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As the Finnish berry-picking season approaches, Finnish Lapland is welcoming foreign berry-pickers to earn money by picking and selling wild berries. A total of 450 Thai berry-pickers have already arrived in Northern Finland to pick wild blueberries as soon as they are ripe - in a couple of days.
     
For the Thai berry-pickers this is the second summer in Finnish Lapland, and their number has grown from fewer than a hundred in 2005 to some 450 in the current season. In addition to Savukoski, Thais pick berries in other locations in Lapland and Northern Finland, including Kuusamo, Kemijärvi, Posio, and Salla. Most of the pickers are rice farmers at home.
      Riitan Herkku, a food processing company in Mustasaari, offers room and board for the berry-pickers. A vacant school in Savukoski's Kuosku village has been turned into a place of lodging for the pickers. Around a hundred pickers have their accommodation in the school.
      The Thais pick the berries themselves and sell them to the berry processing company, who buys berries from local people as well, but needs more. As most Finns only pick for their own consumption, the berry industry has become increasingly dependent on foreign pickers. The price paid to foreign pickers is the same as that paid to Finns.
      Entrepreneur Jan-Erik Gustafsson of Riitan Herkku notes that the pickers have been placed in an area with little population and plenty of forest, where wild berries have earlier been left almost unpicked.
     
The outlook is promising for the Thai rice farmers. During a berry-picking season a busy picker can earn as much as thousands of euros.
      Even though the pickers pay their own travel and accommodation, they will have a nice amount of money left to take back home. On the other hand, many have borrowed money for the trip from their relatives.
      Bandit Jansamran, who serves as an interpreter, reports that in his home country a Thai earns about EUR 2,000 a year. In Finnish forests he can earn the same amount of money - or even more - in a couple of months.
     
Finns do not regard berry-picking as such a gold mine. The local employment office believes that there are several reasons why the jobless are not eager to head into the forest. First, Finland has a good social security network, and secondly, many of the long-term unemployed are older and in relatively poor health.
      Furthermore, wild blueberries fetch about one euro per kilo, which is not huge in Finnish terms. Some of the unemployed claim that the money earned by berry-picking is not enough considering today's high price of gasoline.
      Still last summer, the local residents criticised the berry-pickers who came to Finland from overseas. However, the attitudes seem to have relaxed, and this summer the local people are more than willing to welcome foreign pickers.
      The Thai berry-pickers do not have any contract with Riitan Herkku, and they are free to sell their blueberries or lingonberries to other berry buyers as well. Some 95 percent of the Thai berry-pickers are young men, who say that the work is too hard for women.
      Last summer, the 92 Thai pickers in Savukoski picked a total of 317,000 kilos of wild berries. In comparison, in 2004, Riitan Herkku bought wild berries only from local pickers, and managed to get some 17,000 kilos. Even with everyman's rights on picking wild berries and mushrooms from the Finnish woods, the truth is that the vast majority of this "food for free" natural wealth ends up rotting where it grows.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Thai berry pickers earn money in Finnish Lapland (5.8.2005)

Links:
  Riitan Herkku Oy

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