“The technology has changed too, so a lot of jobs previously done by travelling people are mechanised now, although there will still be some flower pickers employed on a more casual basis.”

He said farms have got bigger and more sophisticated, and these bigger agri-businesses tend to use large-scale organised casual labour.

Work opportunities are scarce on smaller farms these days, he added, where farmers rely more on family members and contractors, and many are not even making enough money to keep themselves employed.

Gypsies and travellers used to follow a regular seasonal route, working alongside local casual labour – flower picking, cauliflower harvesting, bulb planting – many coming into Cornwall from further afield. New rules making it easier to evict travellers from illegal encampments, blocking off of former traveller sites and a lack of authorised traveller parking places have deterred travellers and gypsies from coming to Cornwall for work.

Cornwall, up until the end of the Second World War, had a large number of Romany Gypsies who lived and worked in the Duchy shifting from farming to fishing, and other temporary occupations, with the season to earn their livelihood. Many Romany families appear to have died out, moved away or taken up residency on one of Cornwall’s few permanent traveller sites. The sight of a gypsy caravan and horse parked by a Cornish roadside is now seldom seen or in a farmer’s field.

Jamie Green, who lives in a caravan near Truro, has seen the travelling way of life eroded. He used to travel from farm to farm in Cornwall and up country to work, but finding stopping places became harder and work opportunities contracted – he last worked on a farm more than two years ago.

The experience of travellers like Jamie underlines that what is extinguishing their way of life is not the loss of any one particular farm job. It is because they can no longer rely on the whole network of farms and stopping places, travelling from place to place as the harvests unfold.