Harvest plans held in one head: five things to write down first

Oct 27

4 min read

Updated: Oct 28

Many good harvests are planned in one person's head. They know which fields come first. They know how much the store and grader can take in a day, when to book extra wagons and which buyers will move. It works because they have done it for twenty years.

It stops working the season they are ill, or retire, or farm more ground than one person can carry in their head. That season the cost arrives in familiar forms. Crop is left in the field. Haulage is bought at short notice. Labour stands idle one week and is stretched thin the next.

This is not a distant risk. Defra's survey of the agricultural workforce in England at 1 June 2025 found that 40% of principal farmers and holders who gave their age were 65 or older. In a good many businesses, the harvest plan and the person most likely to step back are one and the same.

Memory fails in the weeks that cost the most

Harvest is where small planning errors become expensive. The NFU's mid-season horticulture labour survey, published in August 2022, found that £22 million of fruit and vegetables had been wasted in the first half of that year directly because of worker shortages. It put the figure for the whole sector at more than £60 million. Respondents were on average 14% short of the workers they needed. Labour is only one moving part. But it shows how quickly a gap in the plan turns into lost crop.

Volumes also move more than memory allows for. Defra's horticulture statistics for 2025, published in June 2026, show UK field vegetable production up 9% on 2024 by weight. Its value rose by less than 1%. More tonnes went through the same sheds, graders and wagons for roughly the same money. A plan built on last year's recollection would have run short of capacity.

Record first, improve second. A plan you can read is a plan someone else can run.

Five things to put on paper

None of this needs planning software. It needs what is currently remembered to be written down, and kept current through the season. These are the five I would start with:

Daily capacity at each bottleneck: intake, store, grader and pack line.
Field order and expected yield, in the order fields are likely to be lifted.
Haulage booked against haulage needed, by week.
Labour needed against labour confirmed, by week and by shift.
What actually happened each week, against the plan.

Each one is a single sheet in a shared spreadsheet. The field list will be wrong. But it will be wrong in a way you can correct, which is a good deal better than nothing written down at all.

The slowest machine sets the pace

Of the five, capacity matters most. Write down how many tonnes or crates a day the intake, store, grader and pack line actually handled on a good day last season. Not the figure on the maker's plate. The lowest of those numbers is the speed of the harvest. Lifting faster only moves the queue into the yard. There the crop sits in trailers and boxes, and starts to lose quality.

A worked example, with illustrative round numbers. Say intake can take 250 tonnes a day, the grader 180 and the pack line 160. If the plan lifts 250 tonnes a day for three weeks, about 70 tonnes a day builds up ahead of the grader. By the end of week three that is nearly 1,500 tonnes. That is fine if the store has room and the crop keeps. If it is a crop that should go straight through, the plan is already broken. Written down in August, you can see it and change the lifting order. Held in memory, you find out in the yard.

The haulage gap is visible weeks ahead

Compare the trailer loads you expect each week with what is booked. The difference is what you will buy at short notice in the busiest weeks, when everyone else is buying too. Hauliers have their own costs to cover. The RHA's annual cost survey, published in December 2024, put the yearly cost of running a 44-tonne artic at about £208,000 including fuel. Costs excluding fuel were up almost 6% on the year. A haulier with that much tied up in a wagon will price peak, short-notice work accordingly. A rough weekly loads plan lets you book earlier. It also gives your haulier a reason to hold capacity for you.

Names, not totals

The same applies to people. Write down how many you need on each shift, week by week, and how many are confirmed by name. Seasonal labour remains tight. The government set the Seasonal Worker visa route at 41,000 places for horticulture in 2026 and has held it at the same level for 2027, as Farmers Weekly reported in September 2026. Growers who know their week-by-week need early are better placed to secure their share, and to plan cover for early leavers.

This year's record is next year's plan

At the end of each week, note what was lifted, graded and sold against the plan. Add a line on why it differed: weather, a breakdown, a buyer who stopped taking. By the end of the season you have something more useful than memory. You have a record of how the operation actually performs under pressure. Next year's plan starts from that. And the person who runs it need not be the one who wrote it.

Where to begin

Put the bottleneck capacities on one sheet this week, using last season's best real days.
List fields in expected lifting order with an estimated yield, and update it after each field is cleared.
Set expected loads per week beside loads booked, and talk to your haulier about the gap now, not in the peak.
Build a labour sheet by week and shift with names against it.
Keep a short weekly note of plan against actual in a spreadsheet anyone in the office can open.

Sources

Figures are taken from the sources listed and were correct at the time of writing. Where rules are described, check the latest official guidance and take qualified advice before acting.