Olive and saffron farmer near Beechworth Gamila MacRury has been struggling to find domestic workers since COVID-19, like many others around the country.

Ms MacRury, ready to expand her operations, had called for expressions of interest for a horticultural production trainee, but was disappointed when the only suitable applicants were women between 30 and 45 years old, who she could't afford to pay above a traineeship wage.

"I was looking ideally for young people, and young people being 16 year olds to 20 year olds, and the reason for that is traineeships don't pay very much," she said.

"They pay like $11 to $16 an hour, which is to say they're really designed for someone who has no cost of living, having a 30 year old on a 16 dollar wage is just unviable."

According to the Australian Government's National Skills Commission Skills Priority List from June last year, a fruit or nut grower is an occupation "not in national shortage, with soft future demand".

Ms MacRury said it should be higher on the priority list with more incentives to encourage young Australians into the sector.

"Hang on, don't we need to feed people?" she said.

"All the media is around we cant get foreign workers, there's no backpackers to pick our stuff, all of that messaging, but if we're so short of workers how is there not a shortage?

"There just seems to be a major disconnect there."

IN OTHER NEWS:

Ms MacRury said the Australian horticulture industry had relied on legal and illegal foreign labour for the last 20 years, to the detriment of the sector.

"We've created a false economy," she said.

"I really can't afford a person at the moment, so I'm running this chicken and egg situation.

"The industry has taken the gain of the cheap labour ... we're now in a situation where we cant get foreign labour and locals don't want to work, I think wage is an issue, but farmers are also going 'but I can't afford more."

Ms MacRury said there were no financial incentives for young Australian's to seek farm work.

"Unless you're really claustrophobic and really anxious around people, why on earth would you work in a hot paddock or a cold paddock for $5 less an hour than you could work in retail?" she said.

Ms MacRury's neighbour and grape, olive, hazelnut and truffle farmer Mark Walpole had similar experience trying to find young domestic workers.

"Since the early 90s the level of interest from young Australian people has just diminished to nothing," he said.

"Literally in the last four or five years we've had no one, bar one Australian person, who's wanted to come and work on the farm.

"Up until the last two or three years most of the commodity prices have been pretty abysmal so there's no real excitement about agricultural or horticulture full stop.

"I could understand why a young person wouldn't want to enter into the industry, because it was pretty depressing."

Mr Walpole said until the pandemic he hadn't had any trouble filling vacant positions with a ready supply of workers from Asia.

"They're always keen to earn money, so we haven't had a problem really until COVID-19 and lockdowns," he said.

"Since the doors have been shut there was no one and I think the problem is that we've been so reliant on Asia and backpackers that we've just forgotten about trying to interest young [Australian] people."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: