Its not the pay, its the conditions

Another rural business is complaining about being unable to find staff, despite offering "high" pay. So what do they want people to do?

“There’s also a perception that contractors work from sunrise to sunset but that’s not accurate, either,” Hawker said.

“Health and safety is our biggest concern – it’s a dangerous industry already without people getting fatigued.”

Waipounamu’s contractors average 60 to 80 hours over a six-day week, earning in the “mid- to high-20s” an hour.

And that's the problem right there: expecting one person to do the work of two. Throw in the fact that its in the middle of nowhere, so you've got no life, and that its dangerous, and you'd basicly have to offer oil rig or fly-in, fly-out wages to attract anyone who isn't stuck there already. If this business wants staff, they need to fundamentally change the working conditions in their industry to a more human pattern. And if they don't, the crops deserve to rot.