There are few takers. Why do you think that is? The pay is excellent for this area of the country. Please explain to me why people won't take that work. I anxiously await your answer and solution.
Because the fact is it's still not enough, regardless of qualifiers like "for this area of the country." If the pay was excellent, you'd have workers.
You sound EXACTLY like the old car dealers who wanted to keep paying their technicians like "grease monkeys" long after their skill set DEMANDED they be treated as professionals.
Actually you raise a very interesting question, and I'm not trying to be flip in my response, but if you have no takers for the job then the local people who have heard about your job offer don't think that the overall compensation is sufficient for the work you want them to do. For some people it may be sufficient, for others it clearly isn't. No doubt if you offered $50 per hour a much larger portion of the people who hear the offer would say yes. Of course you can't necessarily do that since the market also sets your selling price and you have to keep your cost structure in line with that.
Have you ever asked people why they don't want the job? I suspect some people would rather subsist on lower government benefits instead of working. Also, $8 to $12 per hour for field work does not seem like much of a premium over other easier work, like standing behind a cash register in McDonalds. Can you identify high productivity workers who are worth paying more per hour? Sometimes one group or another is more inclined to do a certain kind of work.
Sometimes a different compensation scheme attracts workers, like piecework, or some other approach.
Sometimes people choose to take difficult jobs based in part on the social circumstances. I did some very hard jobs as a teenager (harder than field work) because all my friends were there.
It is not so much a mindset as it is a fact. Our family farm will offer $8-12/hour for field help. In addition to that, we will provide you with transportation if you have none, and we will feed you snacks, a good lunch, and everything you might want to drink during the day. There are few takers. Why do you think that is? The pay is excellent for this area of the country.
The pay may be excellent, but what about job security? What about becoming part of the operation? My own family ran a dairy and truck farm, and there wasn't much room for outsiders to become part of the operation, to be able to contribute to growth and prosperity of the enterprise, to invest in the place, and to share in its growth -- or decline. All the farm hands were paid a fixed price by the hour, or by the bushel, or whatever.
For some people -- like me -- just "doing a job" isn't enough. Oh, I'll do piecework when I have to, such as when my consulting business had the bottom drop out of it and I became a security guard temporarily to keep money coming in, but as soon as I found something better I was GONE. Which makes me a poor fit for your outfit.