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Elementary occupations · code 9211

Crop farm labourers

AI can forecast the harvest. Picking the fruit is still a job for hands.

AI barely touches any of the eight tasks, from planting and picking by hand and stacking hay to packing produce and mending fences.

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

Crop farm labourers perform simple and routine tasks on farms in the production of crops such as fruit, nuts, grains and vegetables. Tasks include - (a) digging and shovelling to clear ditches or for other purposes; (b) loading and unloading supplies, produce and other materials; (c) raking, pitching and stacking straw, hay and similar materials; (d) watering, thinning and weeding crops by hand or using hand tools; (e) picking fruit, nuts, vegetables and other crops; (f) planting and harvesting field crops such as rice, by hand; (g) grading, sorting, bunching and packing produce into containers; (h) performing minor repairs on fixtures, buildings, equipment and fences. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Cane planter - Fruit picker - Rice farm labourer - Vegetable picker Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Skilled farm worker (field crops) - 6111 - Construction labourer (building work) - 9313 - Firewood collector - 9624 - Water collector - 9624

  • vineyard worker
  • fruit and vegetable picker

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

91 / 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

5 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 9.1 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 9.1 = 90.9.

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 69 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?

Crop farm labourers 91

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.

  • Planning shifts and tracking what was picked.
  • Spotting crop disease from photos.
  • Paperwork for pay, safety and certification.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Picking ripe produce without bruising it.
  • Moving between very different jobs in one day.
  • Noticing a problem in the field before a sensor does.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Running and supervising picking and weeding robots.
  • Greenhouse and indoor farming with more monitoring.
  • Recording work on phones and scanners in the field.

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

69 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 38 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

69 How
hands-on
38 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, matched to one US job .

finger skill 42.9 · hand skill 51.7 · cramped spaces 20.5 · 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 13, against an average of 9. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 13

    Grading, sorting, bunching and packing produce into containers

    Very Low
  2. 12

    Performing minor repairs on fixtures, buildings, equipment and fences.

    Very Low
  3. 10

    Loading and unloading supplies, produce and other materials

    Very Low
  4. 9

    Picking fruit, nuts, vegetables and other crops

    Very Low
  5. 9

    Watering, thinning, and weeding crops by hand or using hand tools

    Very Low
  6. 8

    Digging and shovelling to clear ditches or for other purposes

    Very Low
  7. 7

    Raking, pitching and stacking straw, hay and similar material

    Very Low
  8. 6

    Planting and harvesting field crops, such as rice, by hand

    Very Low

8 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 crop farm labourers be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

Not about AI software. Every task, from picking to weeding to packing, rates Very Low. The real question is robotics: picking and weeding machines are improving, especially for crops in neat rows, but soft fruit, uneven fields and varied work are still hard for them.

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 33 jobs in the “Elementary occupations” family, averaging 85. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →