FRUIT farmers could be forced out of business if Agricultural Wages Board plans to increase pickers' wages are ratified at the end of this month. The proposal would see experienced pickers given the rights of a full-time employee.

Chairman of the Swale NFU Maggie Berry said the whole community would suffer. She said: "It's not just the farmers who will be affected. I am seriously worried about the impact on the Garden of England.

"When people think of Kent they think of sheep under cherry trees and orchards full of blossom. Tourism will be hit hard, as we saw during the foot and mouth last year."

Mrs Berry, who grows apples, pears and hops at Brenley Farm, Boughton, near Faversham, said she had no idea how farms would cope should they be required to give pickers with more than 12 weeks experience more pay and benefits including paid holidays.

"You can't pick cherries in the rain and I've no idea what I would do with 30 pickers who expected to be paid come what may," she said. "As things stand if the weather is not right for picking I can tell them not to come in today."

Mrs Berry said pickers tended to stay around Faversham and spent their money locally, supporting the economy. "The NFU is working extremely hard to stop this being ratified, but we'll have to wait and see," she said.

Faversham MP Hugh Robertson, secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Fruit Group, said the new amount to be paid to fruit-pickers was well above the national minimum wage. He condemned the wage increase, saying it could wipe out the Kentish fruit industry and devastate the Garden of England.

"I completely oppose the level of the 2002 Agricultural Wages Board decision. The fruit industry cannot sustain a double-digit wage increase year after year," he said.