Jamie agreed that mechanisation has reduced the availability of some jobs, such as bulb lifting, but 'you can’t cut flowers by machine' he added.

He said: “I know people who used to come from all over the country to do the flower picking and the bulbs – but they can’t do it any more because all the work’s going to the Eastern Europeans.

“People can’t travel now, and people don’t bother coming down as they know there’s no work. When the work was here, people used to come in their thousands to Cornwall. A lot of people used to rely on the work on the daffodils, then there was the caulis, potatoes, bulbs – but now everything’s gone.

“I remember we went round five farms one week. One farm we got there at 6.30 in the morning and the car park was already full of Lithuanians – that just shows the scope of it.”

He believes the bottom line is money – they’re doing it cheaper, but agreed that one important reason for farmers using migrant labour was convenience.

“All the farmer has to do now is contact one person if he wants 50 or 100 people on a certain day, and they’ll provide it,” he said.

He protested: “We managed perfectly alright beforehand without them. That’s how it always was for hundreds of years – local people and travelling people did the work. We work as hard as they do – harder. These people don’t come back every year – they’re just college people – it’s different for locals, we want to go back to the farms, so we provide a good quality of work.”