Why Greenhouses’ Labor Shortages are Structural, not Seasonal
Greenhouse labor availability in Europe has fallen by roughly 30% since 2010. That’s not a bad season. That is fifteen years of steady decline, and every forecast says it continues from here. Across the EU, 61% of farm managers are 55 or older, and only 10.7% are under 40. They are a demographic trend with no reversal in sight, and the data backs that up directly.
The data
61% of EU farm managers are 55 or older; only 10.7% are under 40. The people currently doing the work are aging out faster than they're being replaced.
The OECD old-age dependency ratio is projected to reach 52% by 2060, up from 19% in 1980. Fewer working-age people overall means every physically demanding sector, greenhouse harvest work included, is competing for a shrinking labour pool.
The European Labour Authority's 2025 EURES report states plainly that shortages across the EU are "increasingly structural in nature," driven by demographic change, skills mismatch, working conditions and limited labour mobility, not a post-pandemic dip that corrects on its own.
The Netherlands, home to some of Europe's largest greenhouse horticulture operations, had the highest labour vacancy rate in the EU as of late 2025. The shortage is concentrated exactly where greenhouse density is highest.
Why migration is not closing the gap
Migrant labour has historically filled the difference between how many local workers greenhouses need and how many are available. That buffer is weakening: migrant workers face language barriers, inconsistent recognition of qualifications, and increasingly complex visa and permit processes across EU countries. None of that reverses the underlying demographic curve; it just makes the existing gap harder to plug with the same tool that used to plug it. A structural, not seasonal, shortage such as this cannot be solved with better hiring, higher wages for a season, or waiting it out.
How fully autonomous robots can solve this
We don't fix the demographics. We remove harvest work from the constraint entirely. Harvester performs the physically demanding, time-critical part of greenhouse crop work, harvesting, running up to 22 hours a day, so the operation isn't dependent on a crew showing up during the ripeness window. It integrates into an existing greenhouse without a redesign of the crop or the growing system, which is why it can be added incrementally: one robot first, proven over a full season, then scaled up, as we did with Van Noord Growers moving from one Harvester to three.
That's the model: build for the labor curve that's actually coming, not the one growers wish they still had.