Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers

Low Risk
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Occupation snapshot

What does this snowflake show?
The Snowflake is a visual summary of the five badges: Automation Risk (calculated), Risk (polled), Growth, Wages and Volume. It gives you an instant snapshot of an occupations profile. The colour of the Snowflake relates to its size. The better the occupation scores in relation to others, the larger and greener the Snowflake becomes.
JOB SCORE
5.4/10
What's this?
Job Score (higher is better):

We rate jobs using four factors. These are:

- Chance of being automated
- Job growth
- Wages
- Volume of available positions

These are some key things to think about when job hunting.

Risk & user votes

Calculated automation risk

22% (Low Risk)

Low Risk (21-40%): This occupation has a lower risk of full replacement by AI, software, or robotic systems. Some tasks may be automated or assisted, but the role usually still relies on human judgement, communication, responsibility, physical adaptability, or practical decision-making.

More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.

Human strengths important in this job

These are human abilities and work contexts that are important in this occupation. They may help explain why parts of the role are harder to replace end-to-end, but they are not the only inputs into the automation score.

Decision-making and problem solving

Very important
Why this matters
Analyze information, weigh tradeoffs, and choose the best solution—especially when situations are ambiguous, high-stakes, or have real-world consequences.
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Thinking creatively

Quite important
Why this matters
Coming up with original ideas and designs—creating new concepts, products, systems, or artistic work. This kind of open-ended invention and taste-based judgment is harder to automate end-to-end than routine, rule-based tasks.
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Social perceptiveness

Quite important
Why this matters
Noticing others’ emotions and reactions in the moment and adjusting what you say or do based on why they’re responding that way.
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Persuasion

Quite important
Why this matters
Influencing people to change their minds or behavior through conversation, trust, and negotiation.
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Coordinating others’ work

Quite important
Why this matters
Bringing people together, assigning tasks, and keeping a group aligned so work gets done.
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Show 4 more strengths

Coaching and developing others

Quite important
Why this matters
Helps people learn and improve through coaching, mentoring, and feedback. This relies on trust, motivation, and adapting guidance to each person—work that’s hard to replace end-to-end with automation.
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Developing objectives and strategies

Quite important
Why this matters
Sets long-term goals and chooses strategies and actions to reach them, weighing tradeoffs and adapting plans as conditions change.
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Communicating with people outside the organization

Quite important
Why this matters
Represents the organization to customers, the public, or government—handling questions, concerns, and relationship-building through conversations, writing, calls, or email.
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Active learning

Quite important
Why this matters
Keeps learning from new information and applying it to make better decisions now and in the future, especially when situations change.
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What users think

Based on 326 votes

37% chance of full automation within the next two decades

Our visitors have voted there's a low chance this occupation will be automated. This assessment is further supported by the calculated automation risk level, which estimates 22% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers will be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence within the next 20 years?

Sentiment

Based on user votes over time

View sentiment trend

How opinions have changed over time

Pay & outlook

Wages

High paid relative to other professions

In 2024, the median annual wage for Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers was $87,980 ($42 per hour).

The median annual wage for Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers was 77.7% higher than the national median annual wage, which stood at $49,500.

View wage trend

Wages over time

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Growth

Slow growth relative to other professions.

The number of 'Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers' job openings is expected to decline 1.3% by 2034

View employment trend

Total employment, and estimated job openings

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the period between 2023 and 2033
Updated projections are due 09-2025.

Volume

Significantly lower range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2024 there were 5,910 people employed as 'Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers' within the United States.

This represents around < 0.001% of the employed workforce across the country

Put another way, around 1 in 26 thousand people are employed as 'Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers'.

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What people are saying (11)

Leave a comment
Patryk (Low)
05 Jul 2025 07:26
Little chances of small businessess aquiring budgets necessary to buy high-tech agricultural machines. AI is most likely going to be a helpful tool with most of the paperwork, like separating field for different crops, deciding upon and calculating the amount of fertilizer, helping to diagnose farm animals' diseases, instructing with machine fixing, and such. Until AI is implemented in autonomic farming vehicles, people will lead in this sector.
Brayden (Low)
06 Jul 2024 05:45
Farming takes real human work to do
Grant (Low)
01 Jul 2024 19:23
if you are talking about AI in tractors that is only going to go up up the hard parts of farms are say a flat tire or too much rain are some big factors that might make the robot shut off because farming is no easy job it is only few jobs that you start at age 5 and never quit unless of health or you die so still health.
Jo (No chance)
16 Jun 2023 02:14
Because it’s hard work and u need human skills to do it and if the robots break the farmers fix everything.
Antti Viitanen (Moderate)
15 Dec 2022 07:24
Most of the manual work of farmers will be done with stand-alone robots, drones, or machines. The role of a farmer will change to someone who manages all the work that robots do.

From vertical farming centers, we can see how farming is already changing on a large scale.
Anonymous
22 Apr 2022 08:48
I believe that eventually, robots will take over farming and agricultural jobs. This is already happening in Japan, where they have successfully implemented robot farming. As a result, the number of human farmers will decrease significantly, with only one farmer remaining for every 100 robots.
bill (No chance)
18 May 2021 14:59
old school family farms aren't going to drop all there help just because a machine can do it
Alonso (No chance)
23 Feb 2021 22:17
Farmers are susceptible to the new hydrophobic farms
Anonymous
12 Dec 2020 16:11
I think that the farmers and agricultural jobs will be done by robots only because nowadays in Japan they are practicing successfully the robot farming which means that farmers jobs would be vanished and out of 100 only 1 farmer will remain
AA
25 Feb 2020 19:12
farmers will be replaced by AI because AI can glow plants.
Gary Binzo
01 Sep 2023 00:19
Wow AI can grow plants but farmers can treat animals 10x better than a robot ever could. You forget that just because an AI can do one thing a farmer can do tenfold.
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Job description

Plan, direct, or coordinate the management or operation of farms, ranches, greenhouses, aquacultural operations, nurseries, timber tracts, or other agricultural establishments. May hire, train, and supervise farm workers or contract for services to carry out the day-to-day activities of the managed operation. May engage in or supervise planting, cultivating, harvesting, and financial and marketing activities.

O*NET-SOC code: 11-9013.00