VICTORIA'S fruit and vegetable growers have found themselves with an embarrassment of riches this summer, as backpackers queue up for seasonal jobs before they're even available.

The influx has been attributed to a combination of inclement weather in Queensland, lighter-than-usual crops in Victorian pome and stone-fruit growing areas, high overseas unemployment rates and the strong Australian dollar.

National Harvest Labour Information Service manager, Robert Cameron, said the service was receiving more than 1000 phone calls a day from backpackers and itinerant workers looking for seasonal jobs.

Mr Cameron said the global financial crisis - which had reduced people's spending on discretionary items such as dining out - meant there was less work available to backpackers in traditional casual jobs in bars and restaurants.

"They're being forced to move into the horticultural sector where they haven't normally been," he said.

"That's usually the domain of people looking for their second working visa, whereas we're getting a lot of people looking for work because they can't get anything else in the city and are moving out into the country."

For many years Victoria's growers have complained about the difficulty of getting adequate numbers of seasonal workers to harvest their fruit and vegetables, forcing them to leave valuable crops to rot in the field.

Chronic harvest labour shortages led to the Federal Government establishing a three-year Pacific Island Seasonal Workers pilot scheme.

Mr Cameron said drought and heat had reduced the size of some crops, including stone fruit, apples, pears and citrus, while many cash-strapped growers had pulled out grape vines or citrus, reducing the number of jobs available.

"We encourage growers to contact us if they're looking for workers because we'll be able to help them," he said.

"We had a person looking for 80 positions to do tomato picking and we filled them overnight."

Mr Cameron said this was a far cry from two years ago, when it had been "a lot more difficult" to find workers.

CVGT Employment and Training Services harvest labour co-ordinator, Mike Kiss, said the Goulburn Valley had been inundated with people looking for work in the past few months.

"We've never experienced so many backpackers as we have this year," he said.

Mr Cameron and Mr Kiss said people looking for harvest work were being encouraged to contact job providers before they travelled to a new area, to ensure work would be available.