Agricultural Equipment Operators
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.
- Median pay
- $41,730
- Doing it now
- 66,900
- By 2035
- Up 8.6%
- Usually needs
- No formal educational credential
a year
across the country
10,100 openings a year
to get in
What the work involves
- Adjust, repair, and service farm machinery and notify supervisors when machinery malfunctions.
- Observe and listen to machinery operation to detect equipment malfunctions.
- 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.
- Manipulate controls to set, activate, and adjust mechanisms on machinery.
- 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.
What to study
The fields of study the Department of Education links to this occupation, most widely taught first.
- Agricultural MechanizationSee 24 colleges that teach it
Who it suits
O*NET scores every occupation on six interest dimensions. This one leans hardest on these three.
Hands-on and practical
Organised and precise
Analytical and curious
Careers like this one
Where this comes from: the description and the task list are O*NET, which the Department of Labor maintains. Pay, workforce size, outlook and the education normally needed are the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections programme, 2025 wages and 2025 to 2035 projections. Half of them earn more than $41,730 a year, which means half earn less, and what you would earn depends on where you work and how long you have been doing it. The fields of study come from the National Center for Education Statistics crosswalk.