Teenagers desperate to spread their wings post-lockdown may be the answer to Australia’s embattled farming and hospitality industries, says celebrity chef and fourth-generation farmer Matt Moran. Rural businesses are struggling to harvest crops or serve customers in a post-pandemic world because they simply don’t have the staff, he says. Many of Moran’s own employees – including one who had worked for him for a decade – had to return to their home countries when COVID hit because their visas didn’t entitle them to JobKeeper. “When a farmer works so bloody hard to grow something, to nurture something and then watch it be spoilt on the ground – it’s actually devastating,” Moran told AAP from his NSW Central Tablelands farm. “And we are incredibly short staffed across the board in virtually every one of my (restaurant) businesses, being dictated to as to when we can open and when we can’t because …
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