{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/agricultural-equipment-operators/", "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 Equipment Operators", "soc_code": "45-2091", "category": "Agriculture", "us_employment": 28500, "median_annual_wage": 41730 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 41, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 13, "embodiment": 15, "liability_shield": 3, "trust_premium": 3, "judgment_accountability": 7 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Auto-steer and section control already handle the line-following and rate math that used to define the job, but a 13 reflects that the same shift still ends with you under the combine unplugging a rock-jammed feeder house, swapping shear bolts, re-timing a planter meter, and greasing forty zerks — tasks nobody has built a machine to do.", "embodiment": "A 15 is where you land when the work is climbing in and out of cabs in 95-degree dust, hitching PTO shafts and hydraulic couplers in a muddy headland, unrolling silage tarps, and jumping a dead battery two miles from the shop — uncontrolled ground and weather, but still with a seat, a cab, and a defined field boundary rather than open-ended terrain.", "liability_shield": "A 3 acknowledges the only credential in your wallet may be a CDL for road-moving equipment or a state pesticide applicator card if you run the sprayer — neither is a personal license to operate a tractor, and when a drift complaint or a tile-line strike happens the farm operator or custom applicator carries it, not you.", "trust_premium": "At a 3, the grower cares about acres covered per day and whether the rows are straight — you are hired by the season or the acre, and a neighbor's custom-harvest crew with a newer combine takes the work with no conversation about who did it last year.", "judgment_accountability": "A 7 credits the calls that are genuinely yours — whether the ground is fit to run or you'll rut it, when the moisture is right to start shelling, dropping ground speed when the header starts feeding heavy — but the agronomic decisions on seed, rate, chemical, and timing come to you as a prescription file or a spoken instruction from the operator or agronomist." }, "rationale": "Driving tractors, combines, and sprayers across mapped fields is the single most advanced target in agricultural robotics — GPS auto-steer, section control, and yield-mapping already do the steering and rate decisions, and driverless tillage and spraying rigs are in commercial pilots. What resists is everything around the seat: hitching and calibrating implements, clearing plugged headers, field-side hydraulic and belt repairs, reading soil moisture and crop condition to decide whether to run at all. There is no license and no client relationship protecting this role, so the moat is purely mechanical dexterity in mud and dust — and headcount per acre keeps falling.", "outlook": "By the mid-2030s one operator will supervise several semi-autonomous machines instead of driving one, so the job survives as fleet technician and field-condition judge while total seats keep shrinking.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift as autonomy takes the seat: the surviving job becomes implement setup, in-field mechanical repair, plug clearing, calibration and supervising multiple machines — the tier current AI cannot do. Watch for John Deere/Case autonomous kits shipping at scale while dealer and farm job postings shift to 'autonomy technician / machine supervisor' language.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Rise only in the sense that the remaining share of the day is mud-and-dust dexterity (unplugging a combine header, replacing a bearing in a wet field, hydraulic hose failures) with the seat-time removed. Same task-mix mechanism, not a new capability barrier.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "A pesticide-application rule requiring a certified applicator physically present and personally responsible for each autonomous spray pass — EPA FIFRA certified-applicator supervision rules and state lead-agency guidance on driverless sprayers are the live venue; several states have not yet defined whether 'direct supervision' permits a remote operator. If 'present in the field, one machine at a time' is codified, this rises sharply.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 6 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Road-transit and public-safety rules: state DOT requirements that a licensed human be aboard or immediately trailing any self-propelled machine crossing or traveling public roads (already the default in most state implement-of-husbandry statutes). Enforcement rather than exemption would preserve a required-human seat even where field work is autonomous.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Insurer conditions: crop and equipment underwriters (Rain and Hail, Farm Bureau mutuals) requiring a named human operator-of-record who signs off on go/no-go decisions — running on wet soil, spraying near drift-sensitive neighbors, harvest moisture calls — as a condition of coverage on autonomous fleets. Watch for autonomy exclusions or operator-attestation endorsements appearing in ag equipment policies.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 } ], "ceiling_note": "Trust premium has no realistic route — grain and produce buyers pay for commodity specs, not for who sat in the cab, and no certification scheme markets human-operated tillage. Headcount is the binding problem regardless of scores: one supervisor per fleet means the per-acre labor requirement keeps falling even if each remaining job is harder to automate." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 26070, "wage": 30110 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 26060, "wage": 31190 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 26990, "wage": 31950 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 29220, "wage": 32750 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 26180, "wage": 36360 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 28830, "wage": 37780 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 28910, "wage": 39690 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 30940, "wage": 42580 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 28500, "wage": 41730 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 9.3, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "paving-surfacing-and-tamping-equipment-operators", "title": "Paving, Surfacing, and Tamping Equipment Operators", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 53, "median_wage": 53340, "overlap": 84, "skills_to_close": [ "Learning Strategies", "Monitoring", "Time Management" ] }, { "slug": "refractory-materials-repairers-except-brickmasons", "title": "Refractory Materials Repairers, Except Brickmasons", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 65, "median_wage": 61290, "overlap": 80, "skills_to_close": [ "Operations Analysis", "Reading Comprehension", "Time Management", "Learning Strategies" ] }, { "slug": "operating-engineers-and-other-construction-equipment-operators", "title": "Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 64, "median_wage": 59850, "overlap": 80, "skills_to_close": [ "Time Management", "Active Learning", "Operations Analysis", "Reading Comprehension" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }