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Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers · code 6111

Field crop and vegetable growers

Field crop and vegetable growers plan, organize and perform farming operations to grow and harvest various types of field crop such as wheat and other cereals, rice, beetroot, sugar-cane, groundnuts, tobacco, reed or other field crops, and potatoes, cabbages or other field vegetables, for sale or delivery on a regular basis to wholesale buyers, marketing organizations or at markets. Tasks include - (a) monitoring market activity and conditions, determining types and quantities of crops to be grown, and planning and coordinating production accordingly; (b) preparing soil by hand or machine, and spreading fertilizers and manure; (c) selecting and sowing seeds, and planting seedlings; (d) maintaining crops by cultivating soil, by transplanting, pruning or thinning plants, and by setting up and operating irrigation equipment; (e) controlling weeds, pests and diseases by applying herbicides and pesticides; (f) harvesting crops and destroying diseased or superfluous crops; (g) inspecting, cleaning, grading, packaging, storing and loading crops for sale or delivery to market; (h) tending working animals and maintaining farm buildings, structures, equipment and water supply systems; (i) storing and carrying out some processing of produce; (j) promoting and marketing products, arranging the sale, purchase and transportation of produce and supplies and maintaining and evaluating records of farm activities and transactions; (k) training and supervising workers in crop production, maintenance duties, and health and safety precautions, and hiring and discharging workers and contractors. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Cereal farmer - Cotton farmer - Potato farmer - Rice farmer - Skilled farm worker (field crops) - Sugar-cane grower Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Agricultural production manager - 1311 - Crop farm labourer - 9211 Note Growers of vegetables using intensive cultivation techniques are classified in Unit Group 6113: Gardeners, Horticultural and Nursery Growers.

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 108 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • agronomic crop production team leader

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

82.4
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 17.6 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 17.6 = 82.4

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

72.9
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

33.8
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 39.3 · hand skill 41.1 · cramped spaces 21.3 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4 Hands-on, less fiddly work

Less fine handwork and fewer cramped spaces than a typical hands-on job. That clears one hurdle for machines. It doesn't mean machines are doing this work yet.

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

This number is probably too high

This score only looks at AI tools like chatbots. It doesn't look at robots at all — and this job rates 72.9 out of 100 for how hands-on it is, which is exactly where robots come in.

Have a look at the tasks below and judge for yourself. The ILO scored them low because a chatbot can't do them. Whether a machine with hands could is a different question, and we can't answer it yet.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 43, while the average is 17.6. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 43

    Monitoring market activity and conditions, determining types and quantities of crops to be grown, and planning and coordinating production accordingly

    Low
  2. 38.5

    Promoting and marketing products, arranging the sale, purchase and transportation of produce and supplies and maintaining and evaluating records of farm activities and transactions

    Low
  3. 25.8

    Training and supervising workers in crop production, maintenance duties and health and safety precautions, and hiring and discharging workers and contractors.

    Low
  4. 14.5

    Controlling weeds, pests and diseases by applying herbicides and pesticides

    Very Low
  5. 13.5

    Inspecting, cleaning, grading, packaging, storing and loading crops for sale or delivery to market

    Very Low
  6. 12

    Storing and carrying out some processing of produce

    Very Low
  7. 11.5

    Selecting and sowing seeds, and planting seedlings

    Very Low
  8. 9.5

    Maintaining crops by cultivating soil, by transplanting, pruning or thinning plants, and by setting up and operating irrigation equipment

    Very Low
  9. 9

    Tending working animals and maintaining farm buildings, structures, equipment and water supply systems

    Very Low
  10. 8.5

    Harvesting crops and destroying diseased or superfluous crops

    Very Low
  11. 8

    Preparing soil by hand or machine, and spreading fertilizers and manure

    Very Low

11 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Compared with similar jobs

There are 18 jobs in the “Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers” group, averaging 83.7. This one is below that.