Will AI replace Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse?
Estimated risk score: 19 out of 100
Very low replacement risk
Estimate from published task research, not reviewed by a person · how we estimate
Within about 19 points for 4 in 5 of the jobs we checked (0 to 38).
For the occupation as a whole, from ratings of its 30 O*NET tasks published in 2023 and calibrated to our hand scores. A specialty inside it can sit higher or lower.
O*NET-SOC 45-2092.00 · Farming, Fishing, and Forestry
Tasks rated in 2023 as ones AI could do or speed up
Tasks a GPT-4-class model could do, or do in half the time or less: 3 of its 30 rated tasks. In O*NET’s words.
- Record information about crops, such as pesticide use, yields, or costs.
- Maintain inventory, ordering materials as required.
- Record information about plants and plant growth.
Tasks rated in 2023 as not sped up by AI
Tasks such a model was rated as not speeding up or taking over: 23 of its 30 rated tasks; the first 6 are shown. In O*NET’s words.
- Clean work areas, and maintain grounds and landscaping.
- Harvest fruits and vegetables by hand.
- Harvest plants, and transplant or pot and label them.
- Load agricultural products into trucks, and drive trucks to market or storage facilities.
- Operate tractors, tractor-drawn machinery, and self-propelled machinery to plow, harrow and fertilize soil, or to plant, cultivate, spray and harvest crops.
- Repair and maintain farm vehicles, implements, and mechanical equipment.
What the job is
Manually plant, cultivate, and harvest vegetables, fruits, nuts, horticultural specialties, and field crops. Use hand tools, such as shovels, trowels, hoes, tampers, pruning hooks, shears, and knives. Duties may include tilling soil and applying fertilizers; transplanting, weeding, thinning, or pruning crops; applying pesticides; or cleaning, grading, sorting, packing, and loading harvested products. May construct trellises, repair fences and farm buildings, or participate in irrigation activities.
Also called: Nursery Worker, Greenhouse Worker, Hoer, Budder, Roguer, Grafter, Grubber, Smudger.
Source. This site includes information from the O*NET 30.1 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. (O*NET, CC BY 4.0.) Task ratings: Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock (2023), “GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models”, data used under the MIT licence (licence texts). Our change: we averaged the ratings over this occupation’s tasks and calibrated them to our 0–100 scale. It is not a prediction about any one person and not career advice. Disagree? Write to hello@yourstopwashit.com. How we estimate