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Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers · code 6111

Field crop and vegetable growers

AI can tell you what the market will pay. It can't get the crop out of the ground.

AI barely touches eight of the eleven tasks, including preparing the soil and harvesting. Watching the market and arranging sales are mostly out of its reach too.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

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.

  • 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 / 100

Strongly holds up against AI

Most of this job still needs an actual human. AI would mostly be making the tea.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Not Exposed

108 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 11 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 17.6 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 17.6 = 82.4.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Pinch of salt: this number is probably too rosy

It only asks what AI software could do, and this job is 73 out of 100 hands-on. A chatbot can't do that part. A robot might, one day, and nobody measures how close that is.

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Field crop and vegetable growers 82

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Deciding what to grow from market data.
  • Marketing, sales and records.
  • Precision spraying and field mapping.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Planting, tending and harvesting crops.
  • Supervising and training farm workers.
  • Judging soil, weather and crop health.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Drones and sensors for crop monitoring.
  • Autonomous tractors and weeding robots.
  • Soil and environmental schemes.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

– could do without you

We don't have a measure of how much of this job AI could take over.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Higher

73 how hands-on

Most of this job needs hands, a body or turning up. That's robot territory, and nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to give you a number. We won't make one up.

So could a robot do the physical part?

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.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 34 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

73 How
hands-on
34 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, less fiddly work

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs .

finger skill 39.3 · hand skill 41.1 · cramped spaces 21.3 · averaged · rule: hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4

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 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 43, against an average of 18. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 43

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

    Low
  2. 39

    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. 26

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

    Low
  4. 14

    Controlling weeds, pests and diseases by applying herbicides and pesticides

    Very Low
  5. 14

    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. 12

    Selecting and sowing seeds, and planting seedlings

    Very Low
  8. 10

    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. 9

    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 0.8-observed-use

So, should field crop and vegetable growers be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

Parts of the business side are changing. Planning production and marketing are the most exposed tasks, both Low; sowing, spraying and harvesting rate Very Low. Farm software, drones and precision machines are spreading, but running a farm through weather and pests stays hands-on.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 18 jobs in the “Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers” family, averaging 84. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →