About This Career

Drives and controls equipment to support agricultural activities such as tilling soil; planting, cultivating, and harvesting crops; feeding and herding livestock; or removing animal waste. May perform tasks such as crop baling or hay bucking. May operate stationary equipment to perform post-harvest tasks such as husking, shelling, threshing, and ginning.

This career is part of the Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources cluster Power, Structural and Technical Systems pathway.

A person in this career:

• Loads and unloads crops or containers of materials, manually or using conveyors, handtrucks, forklifts, or transfer augers.
• Mixes specified materials or chemicals, and dumps solutions, powders, or seeds into planter or sprayer machinery.
• Sprays fertilizer or pesticide solutions to control insects, fungus and weed growth, and diseases, using hand sprayers.
• Observes and listens to machinery operation to detect equipment malfunctions.
• Manipulates controls to set, activate, and adjust mechanisms on machinery.
• Operates or tends equipment used in agricultural production, such as tractors, combines, and irrigation equipment.
• Adjusts, repairs, and services farm machinery and notifies supervisors when machinery malfunctions.
• Attaches farm implements such as plows, discs, sprayers, or harvesters to tractors, using bolts and hand tools.
• Loads hoppers, containers, or conveyors to feed machines with products, using forklifts, transfer augers, suction gates, shovels, or pitchforks.
• Directs and monitors the activities of work crews engaged in planting, weeding, or harvesting activities.

Working Conditions and Physical Demands

People who do this job report that:

• You would often handle loads up to 20 lbs., sometimes up to 50 lbs. You might do a lot of lifting, carrying, pushing or pulling.
• Exposure to pollutants, gases, dust, fumes, odors, poor ventilation, etc.
• Conditions are very hot (above 90 F) or very cold (under 32 F)
• Work in this occupation requires being outside most of the time

Working in this career involves (physical activities):

• Judging how far away an object is, or which of several objects is closer or farther away
• Bending, stretching, twisting, or reaching
• Seeing clearly at a distance
• Detecting sounds and hearing the differences between sounds of different pitch and loudness
• Seeing clearly up close
• Speaking clearly enough to be able to be understood by others
• Identifying and understanding the speech of another person
• Lifting, pushing, pulling, or carrying objects
• Using abdominal and lower back muscles repeatedly or over time without tiring

Work Hours and Travel

• Irregular hours
• Overtime work
• Seasonal work
• Weekend work