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