{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/agricultural-workers-all-other/", "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 Workers, All Other", "soc_code": "45-2099", "category": "Agriculture", "us_employment": 3620, "median_annual_wage": 39850 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 46, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 15, "embodiment": 18, "liability_shield": 2, "trust_premium": 4, "judgment_accountability": 7 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Setting irrigation lines across uneven ground, hand-pulling weeds between close-spaced rows, catching and restraining animals, and clearing jammed equipment are all judged by touch and eye in the moment — a 15 rather than 18 because the packhouse sorting and grading portion of this bucket is already being done by optical graders on commercial lines.", "embodiment": "The work is outdoors in mud, heat, dust and livestock pens, on terrain no rail or gantry can be built over, with tasks that require bending into a crop canopy and gripping wet or living material — the 18 rather than 20 reflects the share of this SOC working inside sheds, greenhouses and packing rooms where conditions are at least partly controlled.", "liability_shield": "No state licence, no certification exam, and no signature on any document — the 2 rather than 0 acknowledges pesticide-handler cards and worker protection standard training that some of these jobs require before a worker can be sent into a treated field.", "trust_premium": "Produce leaves the field anonymous and graded by specification, not by who picked it; the 4 reflects that the person who returns each season and knows one farm's fields, gates and quirks is genuinely harder to replace than a first-day hire, but the buyer never learns their name.", "judgment_accountability": "Calls like when a plant is ready to cut, whether an animal is off-feed, or when a hose fitting is about to fail are real and made unsupervised — but they sit at 7 because the decisions are within a day's crop or one animal, and the crew leader or grower owns anything with money or safety attached." }, "rationale": "This is a catch-all bucket — irrigation setup, hand-weeding, sorting and grading produce, animal handling, equipment tending, seasonal field labor — and almost none of it is text or screen work, so language models barely touch it. The real exposure is mechanical: autonomous tractors, GPS-guided sprayers, robotic weeders and optical sorters are commercially deployed right now, and they target exactly the repetitive field and packhouse tasks that define the modal worker here. There is no license, no signature requirement, and no customer paying for a relationship, so nothing slows substitution except capital cost and crop geometry.", "outlook": "Headcount in the repetitive field and packhouse tasks keeps shrinking as ag robotics scales, while the workers who run and fix the machines, handle livestock, and lead crews stay in demand and get paid better.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Displacement of machine-friendly crops (row vegetables, tree nuts, wheat) leaves the remaining hand-work concentrated in geometries robots still fail at: steep-slope vineyards, greenhouse trellis pruning, mixed-species organic beds, live animal handling in unpredictable pens. Watch USDA specialty-crop labor surveys and grower reports of robotic weeder failure rates in high-density diversified plantings.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: the occupation genuinely has two tiers. If optical sorters and autonomous sprayers take the repetitive tier, what remains is machine tending, fault diagnosis, calibration, and exception handling — plus organic-certification handwork that must not be chemically or mechanically treated. Watch job postings that merge 'ag worker' with 'field robotics technician' at operations like Driscoll's or Bowery-style controlled-ag firms.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "A pesticide-applicator or biosecurity rule requiring a certified individual physically present and personally accountable for each autonomous application or animal-movement event — analogous to EPA Worker Protection Standard handler certification, or USDA APHIS foreign-animal-disease traceability requirements after an HPAI or FMD incident. Also watch state autonomous-tractor rules (California Cal/OSHA has long barred driverless operation of ag equipment without an attendant; Title 8 §3441(b)) which effectively require a named human in the field.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "If irrigation-allocation and water-curtailment regimes (SGMA groundwater allocations in California, Colorado River cuts) push per-plot water decisions onto whoever is physically present, the irrigation-setup role starts owning consequential, auditable calls under ambiguity rather than executing a schedule.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Third-party certification schemes that require documented human handwork or human animal handling — Certified Humane / GAP Step 4+ pasture handling, Demeter Biodynamic, some organic hand-weeding attestations — attach a price premium to labor practice, not just crop. This is a premium paid to the farm, though, not to the worker, so the pass-through is weak.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "Even with every lever, this stays mid-band. It is a residual bucket defined by what did not fit elsewhere, and the levers that work best (licensing, judgment) attach to individuals who then get reclassified out of 45-2099 into supervisor or technician codes — so the code itself can shrink while the surviving work looks more resistant. Trust premium has no real route to the worker: buyers pay farms, not field hands, and there is no relationship a customer is purchasing." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 5210, "wage": 30600 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 6600, "wage": 29480 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 6540, "wage": 29590 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 6460, "wage": 30140 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 6100, "wage": 32550 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 6100, "wage": 35720 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 6040, "wage": 40620 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 4980, "wage": 40390 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 3620, "wage": 39850 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -30.5, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }