A £350,000 harvester has been put to work at Fair Green Farms in Middleton, near King's Lynn, one of three blueberry sites managed by Westacre Farms.

It is one of two machines hired to take the place of the previous army of seasonal workers who have become difficult to recruit, and too expensive for the crop to be profitable.

The FineField Harvy 500 machine harvesting Norfolk blueberries at Fair Green Farms in Middleton, near King's Lynn (Image: Sonya Duncan) Westacre Farms manages around 130,000 blueberry bushes in Norfolk, which last summer were hand-picked by a 50-strong team of seasonal workers.

But this year, the harvest is being gathered by the Harvy 500, made by Dutch company FineField, whose oscillating arms shake the bushes so the ripe berries fall off, to be collected softly via a series of brushes as the machine moves through the field.

Alec Birkbeck, a partner at Westacre Farms, said although there had been some initial teething problems with the technology in the first week of the harvest season, it "has to........

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