There's a big meeting that concluded today in Berlin between the German Agriculture Minister (Julia Klöckner, CDU) and Interior Minister (Horst Seehofer, CSU).
So here's the deal on farm-help from outside of Germany. Because of border restrictions.....it's currently impossible to get farm labor into the country for the planting season (supposed to start this week).
The solution? There will be a entry-exit program....allowing here (immediately) for 40,000 season workers to come into Germany under certain conditions (not fully spelled out).
My guess is that the guy/gal has to show up in his country (Romania is where the bulk will come from) with an ID, and take a temperature reading.
Then, the guy has to fly out of Romania.....to Germany, and he'll return the same way.
Cost? Unknown. If you did the math....with 250-passenger planes, you'd require 160 passenger flights. Who pays for this? No one says much.
On the plus side, plenty of Lufthansa planes are sitting there and there's not going to be a problem in getting two-dozen up and running (with aircrews happy for a 3-hour flight into Romania). You can figure each flight carrying two missions a day, so you can haul the 40,000 into Germany in ten days.
Organizing this? That's the problem I see. You'd have to get this explained to the Romanian farm-workers, and convince them to show up at 7 AM on some morning.....to fly into one of five or six different airports around Germany, and have some bus deal set up to bring the workers to the appropriate farm areas.
You need a master organizer (some retired general), who would run this like some 1950ish Berlin Airlift operation. Cost factor? Probably up into the tens of millions.
But I will say this....if you wanted a minimum affect on farm products and prices for 2020....this has to happen, and it needs to be set up and running by the middle of next week.
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