{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/agricultural-engineers/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Agricultural Engineers", "soc_code": "17-2021", "category": "Engineering", "us_employment": 1480, "median_annual_wage": 98590 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 52, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 11, "embodiment": 11, "liability_shield": 10, "trust_premium": 8, "judgment_accountability": 12 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Sizing a tile drain lateral, running NRCS curve-number runoff models, drafting a grain bin in SolidWorks, and cleaning telemetry from soil-moisture probes are all rule-bound enough for software to carry, but nobody automates the trip out to the failing lagoon berm or the retrofit of a combine header on a specific farmer's ground — which splits the day roughly in half and puts this at 11 rather than up with field-only trades.", "embodiment": "You are on site for pump commissioning, laser grade checks, feedlot and manure pit inspections, and machinery trials in mud and dust — but that is episodic fieldwork bracketing weeks at a workstation doing hydraulic calcs and drawings, so 11 rather than the 15+ of an equipment operator who never leaves the field.", "liability_shield": "The 10 reflects a real split: water-resource designs, retention structures, and grain and livestock buildings that get stamped carry PE personal liability under state engineering practice acts, while ag engineers in machinery R&D, extension, or ag-tech firms often work under the industrial exemption and never seal a drawing in their careers.", "trust_premium": "Repeat work for the same producers, co-ops, and drainage districts means growers ask for you by name after your last plan held through a wet spring, but the deliverable is still a design and a report someone else could have produced — the relationship shortens the sales cycle, it isn't the product.", "judgment_accountability": "You decide design storm return periods, setback distances from wells, ventilation rates that determine whether livestock die in a heat event, and whether a lagoon liner spec is adequate under state nutrient-management rules — genuine consequential calls, but bounded by NRCS standards, ASABE specs, and permit conditions rather than made in a vacuum, which is what keeps it at 12." }, "rationale": "Much of the work — irrigation and drainage calculations, CAD drafting of equipment and storage structures, sensor/yield data analysis, grant and permit paperwork, feasibility write-ups — is exactly the structured technical output AI now drafts competently. What holds is the field half: walking fields and feedlots to diagnose why a drainage plan or manure-handling system actually failed, commissioning machinery, and taking responsibility for designs that touch food safety, water rights, and livestock welfare. PE licensure applies to stamped structural and water-resource work but a large share of ag engineers never stamp anything, so the shield is partial.", "outlook": "A small field that shrinks further on the drafting-and-analysis side while field-based, licensed, permit-facing ag engineers stay in steady demand as water and effluent regulation tightens.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "State expansion of PE-seal requirements to animal-feeding-operation waste structures: several states already require a licensed engineer's stamp on CAFO manure lagoon and containment designs under NPDES/state permit rules, but the industrial-exemption and 'NRCS-approved standard drawing' routes let much of this work proceed unstamped. If EPA's CAFO permitting revision or state ag-department rules removed the standard-drawing exemption and required a named PE to certify lagoon liner, freeboard, and storage-volume calculations — with personal liability on breach — a much larger share of the occupation's output would pass through an individual seal.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "USDA NRCS conservation practice standards (Practice 313 waste storage, 590 nutrient management, 606 subsurface drain) currently allow certified technical service providers, including non-PE staff, to certify designs for cost-share payments. If NRCS restricted design certification for structural and water-resource practices above a size threshold to licensed PEs — a change already argued for by state engineering boards over TSP scope — the licensure gate would bind on funded projects, which are most projects.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "State dam-safety and lagoon-failure regimes assigning a named engineer-of-record ongoing responsibility for inspection and breach risk, as North Carolina moved toward after hurricane lagoon failures. If periodic re-certification by the responsible engineer becomes the norm rather than one-time design approval, the role owns a recurring consequential call under genuine ambiguity (weather loading, aging liners) rather than a one-off deliverable.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift as the drafting tier is absorbed: irrigation sizing, CAD, yield-data regressions and grant narratives are the automatable tier, while forensic diagnosis of why an installed drainage or manure-handling system failed — reconciling soil, contractor deviation, and operator behavior on site — is a genuinely separate tier. If firms respond by shrinking junior drafting headcount and retaining only diagnostic and commissioning roles, the remaining job is measured against harder work, though this raises the score of the surviving job while shrinking the count.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Precision-ag and autonomous-machinery commissioning becoming a formalized field function: manufacturer and insurer requirements that autonomous tractor and sprayer deployments (e.g., John Deere autonomy, and the emerging ISO 18497 agricultural-autonomy safety standard) be validated on-site by a qualified engineer for field-boundary, obstacle, and drift conditions would attach irreducible physical presence in unpredictable terrain to the role.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "No plausible route to a higher trust premium: the buyers are growers, integrators, co-ops and USDA programs purchasing a permit-satisfying deliverable at lowest cost, and there is no consumer-visible 'human-engineered' label to pay for. Also note the occupation is only ~1,480 workers; the liability levers above would raise the score of the stamping subset while doing nothing for the unstamped majority in equipment, food-process, and data roles." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 1770, "wage": 74780 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 1630, "wage": 77110 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 1550, "wage": 80720 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 1440, "wage": 84410 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 1120, "wage": 82640 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 1500, "wage": 83260 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 1860, "wage": 88750 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 1680, "wage": 84630 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 1480, "wage": 98590 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -16.4, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "civil-engineers", "title": "Civil Engineers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 63, "median_wage": 100840, "overlap": 79, "skills_to_close": [ "Time Management", "Management of Material Resources", "Operations Analysis" ] }, { "slug": "mining-and-geological-engineers-including-mining-safety-engineers", "title": "Mining and Geological Engineers, Including Mining Safety Engineers", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 68, "median_wage": 106220, "overlap": 77, "skills_to_close": [ "Management of Material Resources", "Management of Financial Resources", "Programming", "Monitoring" ] }, { "slug": "farmers-ranchers-and-other-agricultural-managers", "title": "Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 62, "median_wage": 89900, "overlap": 64, "skills_to_close": [ "Management of Material Resources", "Management of Financial Resources", "Equipment Maintenance", "Management of Personnel Resources" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }