{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/first-line-supervisors-of-farming-fishing-and-forestry-workers/",
  "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": "First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers",
    "soc_code": "45-1011",
    "category": "Agriculture",
    "us_employment": 27960,
    "median_annual_wage": 59320
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 60,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 14,
    "embodiment": 18,
    "liability_shield": 5,
    "trust_premium": 10,
    "judgment_accountability": 13
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Deciding that this block of strawberries is at picking maturity while the next row needs two more days, then redeploying a 30-person crew mid-morning when a picker goes down or a conveyor jams, is judgment made by walking and touching the crop — it sits at 14 rather than 18 because the recordkeeping half of the day (piece-rate tallies, yield logs, H-2A hour reports) is already being pulled into farm-management platforms.",
    "embodiment": "You are outdoors in heat, dust, mud and cold for most of the shift, climbing on tractors and harvesters, checking irrigation lines and pruning cuts, standing on a fishing deck or a felling site where footing and weather change hourly — the 18 reflects genuinely uncontrolled terrain, short of 20 only because part of the week goes to an office or truck cab for scheduling and compliance paperwork.",
    "liability_shield": "There is no supervisor licence in agriculture: a state pesticide applicator certification (and sometimes a commercial driver's licence or first-aid card) is the whole credential stack, and when a worker is injured the citation lands on the employer under the OSHA general duty clause and the Worker Protection Standard, not on you personally — hence 5 rather than 0, since that applicator card is a real legal requirement someone must hold.",
    "trust_premium": "Crews return year after year for the supervisor they trust to pay accurately, communicate in their language, and not push them through a heat-illness day, and that loyalty is what fills a harvest window — but the buyer of the crop deals with the owner or packer, not you, which caps this at 10 instead of the mid-teens.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Calling a work stoppage before a thunderstorm, deciding whether a bruised load still meets the buyer's grade, or pulling a crew off a field within a pesticide re-entry interval are consequential calls made without waiting for a phone call up the chain; it lands at 13 rather than higher because harvest windows, contract grades, and labor budgets are set above you and constrain the range of choices."
  },
  "rationale": "This is a boots-in-the-field job: walking crop rows and orchards, judging when a block is ready to pick, assigning crews to tasks, fixing what breaks, and enforcing safety on moving equipment — none of which a language model can do. The automatable slice is the paperwork layer: crew scheduling, payroll and piece-rate tallies, harvest yield logs, H-2A and OSHA compliance records, and pesticide application reports, all of which farm management software plus AI is absorbing quickly. Licensure is thin (pesticide applicator certification in some states), so the moat is physical presence and on-the-spot judgment, not regulation.",
  "outlook": "The role persists because someone has to be standing in the field, but the administrative half thins out and each supervisor covers more acres with software doing the scheduling and record-keeping.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State pesticide-applicator rules tightening so that a certified applicator-in-charge must be physically present and personally sign each application record, including for drone/UAS and autonomous sprayer applications — EPA's Part 171 certification-of-applicators rule and FAA Part 137 exemptions for agricultural UAS already push toward a named certified human responsible for each pass. If states add a supervisor-signature requirement for autonomous equipment passes, this rises sharply.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 5
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "H-2A compliance enforcement (DOL Wage and Hour, the 2024 Farmworker Protection Rule and its litigation) attaching individual supervisor liability for housing, transport, and wage-record accuracy, so a named on-site supervisor must attest to daily hours and piece-rate records rather than software generating them unattested.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: as scheduling, payroll tallies, yield logs and compliance filing get absorbed by farm management software, what remains is the irreducible judgment tier — harvest-timing calls on a block worth six figures, heat-illness stand-down decisions under Cal/OSHA §3395 and the proposed federal heat rule, and crew reassignment when weather turns. Fewer clerical hours per consequential call raises this dimension without any legal change.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "OSHA heat-injury and illness prevention standard (proposed 2024) finalizing with named-supervisor duties for acclimatization, rest-break enforcement, and emergency response — making the stand-down call an owned, documented, auditable decision rather than informal practice.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Autonomous orchard/row-crop equipment scaling to the point the supervisor's day becomes exception-handling for machine failure in mud, canopy, and slope — diagnosing why a robotic harvester is bruising fruit, which is field-diagnostic work no remote system does. Raises task resistance only if fleets grow while remote-operations centers stay thin.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Trust premium has no realistic route: the buyer is a farm owner or packing shed buying labor coordination at commodity margins, not a client who would pay extra for a human crew boss. Licensure will stay thin outside pesticide handling — no state is likely to license farm supervision generally. Realistic ceiling is roughly the low 70s, and it rests on embodiment plus pesticide/heat-safety signature duties, not on any market preference for human supervisors."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 20750,
        "wage": 46570
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 21800,
        "wage": 46960
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 22560,
        "wage": 48280
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 22640,
        "wage": 50080
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 25770,
        "wage": 48640
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 27670,
        "wage": 54490
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 27150,
        "wage": 57320
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 29530,
        "wage": 59330
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 27960,
        "wage": 59320
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 34.7,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}