Description
Drive and control 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.
- • Manipulate controls to set, activate, and adjust mechanisms on machinery.
- • Direct and monitor the activities of work crews engaged in planting, weeding, or harvesting activities.
- • Load hoppers, containers, or conveyors to feed machines with products, using forklifts, transfer augers, suction gates, shovels, or pitchforks.
- • Spray fertilizer or pesticide solutions to control insects, fungus and weed growth, and diseases, using hand sprayers.
- • Attach farm implements such as plows, discs, sprayers, or harvesters to tractors, using bolts and hand tools.
- • Operate towed machines such as seed drills or manure spreaders to plant, fertilize, dust, and spray crops.
- • Drive trucks to haul crops, supplies, tools, or farm workers.
- • Walk beside or ride on planting machines while inserting plants in planter mechanisms at specified intervals.
- • Weigh crop-filled containers, and record weights and other identifying information.
- • Load and unload crops or containers of materials, manually or using conveyors, handtrucks, forklifts, or transfer augers.
- • Guide products on conveyors to regulate flow through machines, and to discard diseased or rotten products.
- • Position boxes or attach bags at discharge ends of machinery to catch products, removing and closing full containers.
- • Adjust, repair, and service farm machinery and notify supervisors when machinery malfunctions.
- • Observe and listen to machinery operation to detect equipment malfunctions.
- • Irrigate soil, using portable pipes or ditch systems, and maintain ditches or pipes and pumps.
- • Mix specified materials or chemicals, and dump solutions, powders, or seeds into planter or sprayer machinery.
- • Operate or tend equipment used in agricultural production, such as tractors, combines, and irrigation equipment.
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Tasks & skills:
O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
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This site includes information from O*NET by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. Career Clutch has modified some of this information for student readability. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.
Last reviewed: Jan 2026
