15 Aug The RSE diet: Don’t judge a vineyard worker by his shopping trolley
Coming from a place where doing groceries means “picking fresh fruit off the tree” moving to New Zealand can mean a big dietary adjustment for seasonal workers.
Workers are often spotted in Blenheim supermarkets with trolleys filled with 89 cent bread, two minute noodles, and bulk rice – so people often assume the diet of an overseas vineyard worker is high in carbohydrates and low in nutrients.
However, those who work closely with workers say while it might look unhealthy the supermarket shop is only a portion of what they eat.
As well as pulling long hours on the vineyards, some workers employed through the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme also attend an educational course called Vakameasina.
Vakameasina regional co-ordinator Anne Barrer said the diet of an RSE worker was one of the main criticisms it got as often people only saw what was in their shopping baskets.
“We’re teaching them what the good carbohydrates are and that green vegetables are essential for their diet.”
Getting workers to eat well could be a juggling effort as they were often saving as much as they could.
“They’re also trying to make as much money as possible to send home and fruit and vegetables they are used to can be expensive here. So it is all about finding a balance.”
She said workers were also often given fruit and vegetables from the company they worked for.
The Vakameasina programme focused on literacy and numeracy as well as life skills. It was funded by the New Zealand Aid programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Recent statistics show a third of RSE workers arrived to New Zealand with health issues, mainly boils and just over half arrived with dental problems.
Often pastoral care and others in the horticulture industry had to help tend to this when workers first arrived – which was why the course was so valuable to help educate workers about looking after themselves once they had moved to New Zealand.
Thornhill pastoral care manager Julie Neal said of lot of the move is about education.
“It’s small things, such as they don’t know our vegetables,” Neal said. “Our food is totally different to where they are from so they go for convenience here.”
“I think the biggest thing is taking the correct food out onto the field.”
Barrer said overseas workers, “learn quite quickly that they need to eat properly otherwise they get sick”.
“If they get sick they miss out on work and don’t get paid, which is the main reason they are here.”
The Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme (RSE) saw overseas workers, generally from the Pacific, employed in the viticulture and horticulture industry.
The overseas workers were only allowed to fill jobs where there was a labour shortage and not enough Kiwis to do the work.
Each year, any decision to raise the cap for RSE workers was made by the Government. In November 2018, the cap was set at 12,850.
Decisions on the number of RSE workers that employers could recruit were made by Immigration New Zealand (INZ) in consultation with the Ministry of Social Development.
Since the RSE scheme was introduced in 2007, the cap had steadily increased to cater for the growing wine industry.