In principle, there is a choice. On the one hand, a growing chorus of authoritative voices in the country is asserting that seasonal workers from Asia are not a problem—they provide high-quality work and are already relatively inexpensive.
On the other hand, the number of harvesters in Moldova’s orchards and berry fields will soon be counted in the tens rather than the single digits. The question of which of these solutions will soon seem more exotic is by no means rhetorical.
The Human Factor
Logos Press sources within Moldova’s fruit growers’ associations cite a long list of shortcomings among local seasonal workers:
– age—in our country, according to employers’ observations, it is approaching 60, whereas in neighboring Ukraine, the average is 45 (although the war is changing the demographic picture);
– Motivation—it is low, regardless of the amount or form of payment (monthly, daily, or per kilogram of harvested produce);
– lack of transparency—contrary to statements by ministry and agency officials that, for example, the e-Zilier system improves social protections for daily-wage workers, the vast majority of workers do not believe in these good intentions and prefer cash payments without documentation;
– Unpredictability – “I don’t know how many people we’ll be able to gather tomorrow to harvest the crop,” regardless of the conditions (pay, weather, etc.), has become the norm for any harvest campaign;
– Unprofitability—day laborers are either expensive and work slowly, or they do poor-quality work (or both).
In horticulture and, to some extent, in viticulture, farm owners try to solve these problems through long-term employment—for the entire season, including work during the off-season (pruning, landscaping, etc.). They plant orchards with various species and varieties that have different ripening times—to ensure successive harvesting phases by the same group of workers.
Unfortunately, this method does not work in all cases. Climate change has exacerbated the situation—often, crops (of different species and varieties) ripen simultaneously rather than in succession. As a result, there is still a severe shortage of workers.
In the berry industry, the situation is even more complicated for a number of reasons (small and soft fruits, the narrow specialization of farms, a shorter season, etc.).
Moldovan berry producers try to minimize some of the costs of hiring local day laborers by paying daily wages based on “output”—that is, the number of kilograms of produce delivered. This is the predominant—and expensive—method; when harvesting high-value berries, the cost per worker ranges from 500 to 1,500 lei per day.
At the same time, the quality of the work is still not guaranteed—cost control is essential.
Five to seven years ago, Moldovan fruit growers viewed the hiring of foreign labor with cautious curiosity that gradually turned into enthusiasm. The business community quickly began to spread stories about the unpretentiousness, neatness, non-confrontational nature, sobriety, and—most importantly—superhuman work capacity of Tajiks, Indians, Bangladeshis, and Nepalese.
The only problem was that these workers did not fit the mold of “new Ostarbeiters”—they required adequate housing conditions and a salary that often “exceeded the costs of local day laborers by several times.”
In addition, in some cases, foreign seasonal workers viewed Moldova as a temporary stopover—a place to acclimate before securing more lucrative employment in Romania, Poland, and elsewhere in the EU.
For some time now, alongside individual farmers’ efforts to recruit staff on their own, intermediaries—recruitment agencies—have become involved in supplying Moldova’s agricultural sector with labor.
The effect so far has been mixed. Some farmers claim that it has become easier and even cheaper for them to hire seasonal workers from Asian countries, while others argue that professional services come at a cost, and that rates for legal and diligent “working hands” have risen.
The alternative: combine harvesters
Two years ago, Moldova’s berry industry saw the “debut of mechanization”: the company “Costețchi Valentin Mihail” (in the village of Kremenchug, Soroca District) began harvesting with combine harvesters on Moldova’s largest black currant plantation (62 hectares).
As a result, the company was able to drastically reduce its harvesting costs: manual harvesting cost about 7 lei/kg (a berry picker earned an average of 0.8–1.5 thousand lei per shift), while using a harvester cost about 1 leu per kilogram. At the same time, the harvester’s daily output proved comparable to that of about 100 harvesters.
In 2026, as company co-founder Igor Tkach noted in an interview with a Logos Press correspondent, the situation changed. The farm still uses combine harvesters to harvest currants—two specialized machines. However, due to the sharp rise in diesel fuel prices, the cost of mechanized harvesting has increased significantly. Nevertheless, it is still significantly more cost-effective than harvesting by hand.
“There is another very important feature of this year’s harvest campaign,” notes Igor Tkach. “This year, the peak of the harvest coincided with a period of very high air temperatures, and since currants are almost black berries, they heat up quickly and significantly. Under such conditions, high-quality harvesting was only possible at night. Obviously, this would have been impossible without harvesters.”
Incidentally, the same Polish company that previously supplied Moldova with currant harvesters has already imported harvesters for sweet cherries, cherries, and plums into the country. These machines are already in operation this season. According to fruit industry operators, there are nearly ten such machines in Moldova.
So the competition between people and machines in Moldova’s fruit-growing sector is taking on quite distinct characteristics.
