{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/farm-and-home-management-educators/",
  "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": "Farm and Home Management Educators",
    "soc_code": "25-9021",
    "category": "Education",
    "us_employment": 8220,
    "median_annual_wage": 60220
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 51,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 11,
    "embodiment": 12,
    "liability_shield": 4,
    "trust_premium": 14,
    "judgment_accountability": 10
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Roughly half the job — soil-test interpretation, budget worksheets, 4-H curriculum writing, monthly newsletters, needs assessments, and USDA/NIFA reporting — is text and spreadsheet work AI now drafts, while on-farm scouting visits, hands-on canning and pesticide-applicator trainings, and county fair judging still need a person present, which lands it at 11 rather than in either extreme.",
    "embodiment": "A county agent drives a truck to farms in mud and heat, pulls soil cores, inspects livestock and pest damage, and sets up demonstration plots, but the majority of hours are still spent in an office at a desk or in a climate-controlled meeting room, so it sits at 12 rather than up with field crop workers.",
    "liability_shield": "No state licence gates this work — a bachelor's or master's in agriculture plus a state pesticide-applicator or ServSafe credential is the norm, and extension advice is delivered as land-grant recommendation, not certified professional opinion, so nobody's signature carries personal liability if a nitrogen rate underperforms.",
    "trust_premium": "The 14 reflects that adoption of extension advice tracks the agent's personal standing in the county — farm families who have known you across two generations, 4-H parents, and producers who call your cell before they call a chemical rep — a relationship that a new hire, human or otherwise, cannot inherit on day one.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Advice is anchored to published land-grant recommendations, label rates, and USDA program rules, but the agent independently decides what a failing field actually needs, whether a family's finances warrant a program referral, and when a food-safety practice is unsafe enough to shut down — real discretion within someone else's guidelines, hence 10."
  },
  "rationale": "Cooperative extension agents spend much of their time producing fact sheets, newsletters, grant reports, and workshop curricula — text work that generative AI drafts at usable quality, and farmers can now query an AI directly for the agronomic lookup questions that once required a call to the county office. What survives is the part that requires boots in a field: walking a soybean stand to diagnose a disease, running a pesticide-safety or food-preservation demonstration, and holding decades of trust with specific farm families who take advice from a known person, not a chatbot. Scored for the modal county-level agent; research-station specialists sit somewhat higher.",
  "outlook": "Extension survives as a field-and-community role but with fewer positions and less time spent producing written materials, so the agents who keep their jobs will be the ones logging site visits and running hands-on programs.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State pesticide-applicator and food-safety training rules that require a certified, named instructor of record to sign off on hands-on competency (e.g. state lead agencies' EPA-approved certification plans under the revised 40 CFR 171, and FSMA Produce Safety Rule / Preventive Controls 'qualified individual' training that must be delivered by an AFDO/PSA-listed trainer) tightened so AI-generated or self-paced modules cannot substitute for the practical exam — making the extension agent the personally accountable signer on the certificate",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 5
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Extension agents added as required credentialed writers/verifiers of nutrient management or manure management plans in state CAFO permitting (as some states already restrict plan writing to certified specialists), so the agronomic recommendation carries a named liable author",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: once fact sheets, newsletters and grant reports are drafted by AI, the residual role is field diagnosis, on-farm trial design, and pesticide/food-preservation demonstration — genuinely a second tier here. Raises task_resistance only if headcount is held (state and federal Smith-Lever/county appropriations sustained) rather than the county office being consolidated",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Formal role in disaster and disease response — county agents designated in state emergency plans as the on-ground verifier for USDA disaster program loss documentation, or for regulated pest/disease quarantine scouting (HPAI, citrus greening, spotted lanternfly), where the call triggers destruction or payment",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Fee-for-service or contract farm-visit programs (already used by some land-grant systems and by UK/AHDB-style paid advisory models) where growers or ag lenders pay specifically for an independent, non-vendor human agronomic opinion to counter input-dealer bias",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Funding, not capability, is the binding constraint: this is a small appropriated workforce, and county-office consolidation can cut headcount even as the surviving job gets more judgment-heavy. Liability levers apply mainly to the certification-and-permitting slice of the work, not to the general education mission."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 8720,
        "wage": 49710
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 8090,
        "wage": 51550
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 10620,
        "wage": 49990
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 8220,
        "wage": 53450
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 8110,
        "wage": 59770
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 10260,
        "wage": 58120
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 8220,
        "wage": 60220
      }
    ],
    "from": 2019,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -5.7,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [
    {
      "slug": "chefs-and-head-cooks",
      "title": "Chefs and Head Cooks",
      "verdict": "SAFE",
      "risk_resistance": 68,
      "median_wage": 62470,
      "overlap": 62,
      "skills_to_close": [
        "Quality Control Analysis",
        "Equipment Maintenance",
        "Management of Personnel Resources",
        "Repairing"
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "farmers-ranchers-and-other-agricultural-managers",
      "title": "Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers",
      "verdict": "EXPOSED",
      "risk_resistance": 62,
      "median_wage": 89900,
      "overlap": 51,
      "skills_to_close": [
        "Equipment Maintenance",
        "Repairing",
        "Equipment Selection",
        "Troubleshooting"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}