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Farmer
Grows the food, and decides every season what to plant, when to spray and when to harvest — and is the occupation where a government counts, year by year, how much of its farmland is now sprayed by drones.
Find out what your country requires to fly a spraying drone, and whether the pesticides you use are approved for drone application.
This is not a probability of losing your job. It combines how much of the role's task load is exposed to automation with how far adoption has actually gone — useful for comparing occupations on one consistent basis, and for nothing else.
Written for farmers and farm workers who grow crops — rice, grains, vegetables and fruit — on their own or others' land. Livestock farming is touched on in one task and is not the focus. Both sources come from Japan's agriculture ministry: a count of how much farmland is sprayed by drones, and the law that funds adopting smart-farming technology. Japan is an ageing, small-plot farming country where labour shortage drives adoption, so its pace is not a guide to large-scale farming elsewhere. The drone figures are the ministry's own estimates, made by methods that changed between years, so this page does not turn them into a growth rate. Nothing here counts farmers.
What is actually changing#
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Recent changes#
The ministry's own report on drone use in agriculture, dated March 2026, read in full. It states that the cumulative area sprayed with pesticide, fertiliser and similar materials by drone passed one million hectares in fiscal 2023 and continued to expand, at about 1,196 thousand hectares in fiscal 2024 (an estimate); that sales of spraying drones have run at roughly 3,000 to 4,000 a year, rising slightly to 3,359 in fiscal 2024; and that 1,461 pesticides suitable for drone spraying were registered by the end of fiscal 2024. Its own method note says the area was compiled from operators' reports in 2016–2018, estimated from prefectural data in 2019 and from flight-time reports in 2020, not compiled in 2021, and estimated from registered aircraft and average area per aircraft from 2022 onward; the series therefore mixes methods and is not a reliable growth rate. Cumulative area counts a field once per spraying. It establishes the scale of drone spraying in one country; it does not count farmers, or say how many use drones themselves versus hiring a service.
An employer has put it into production. Can move the baseline — weighted by scale and how similar the setting is.
The ministry's own page on the Act, read in full. The Act on Promoting the Use of Smart Agricultural Technology to Improve Agricultural Productivity was enacted on 14 June 2024, promulgated on 21 June and took effect on 1 October 2024. In response to changes including the decline in the number of farmers, it creates two certification schemes — a production-method innovation plan for farmers who adopt smart-farming technology together with new ways of producing, and a development and supply plan for businesses that develop and spread such technology — and certified farmers and businesses can receive financial and other support; the page adds priority in subsidy programmes and a tax measure. It is a law that funds adoption; it does not show how many farmers were certified or what adoption followed.
Regulation, subsidy or public procurement is requiring or funding adoption — the mirror of a constraint. It shows adoption is being required, not that it has happened, so one mandate is never enough on its own; two independent ones are.
What this means for you#
If you are starting in farming, the physically hardest and most repetitive work — spraying above all — is the part machines are taking fastest, and in Japan the state is paying farmers to adopt them because there are too few farmers. That makes operating and maintaining drones and smart machinery part of the job rather than an extra. The parts that stay yours are the decisions and the delicate hand work, and the first of those is also the part you are paid for.
Your knowledge of your own fields and crops is what the machines depend on and cannot supply. The farmers these changes favour are the ones who can decide which work to hand to a drone or a service provider, and who can put together the plan that funding now asks for.
Your options#
Four directions, each with its real constraints and one thing you can test this week. Continuing as you are is a legitimate choice — it just has to be a chosen one.
Stay on the farm, and take on the machines
Spraying and field work are moving to drones and self-steering machinery, and where the state funds adoption, the farmers who can operate and maintain them keep the work that used to need several people.
Machines are expensive for small farms, and drone spraying requires registration and approved pesticides.
Find out what your country requires to fly a spraying drone, and whether the pesticides you use are approved for drone application.
Become a farming service provider
Where small farms cannot each buy a drone or a robot tractor, contractors who own the machines and spray or plant for many farms fill the gap — the ministry's drone report describes a demonstration that aims to set up exactly such a contract service.
It needs capital, licences and enough nearby farms to make the equipment pay.
Ask your local farming cooperative or extension office whether drone spraying or machine contracting services operate in your area, and what they charge.
Move into agricultural technology support
The ministry's drone report lists a shortage of people who can advise farmers in the field on using the new technology. Farm experience is exactly what makes that advice credible.
These roles are with extension services, cooperatives or equipment dealers, and may need technical training.
Look up whether your extension service or cooperative runs training on smart-farming equipment, and whether it hires people to deliver it.
Common questions#
Not the farmer's decisions, and not yet the delicate hand work. What machines are taking is the physically hardest, most repetitive field work: in Japan, the agriculture ministry estimates that drones sprayed about 1.2 million hectares of cumulative area in fiscal 2024, and a 2024 law funds farmers who adopt smart-farming technology because the number of farmers is falling. So the machines arrive to cover a shortage of people, which is a different thing from replacing the ones who are there.
We do not answer that with a number of years, and for this occupation there is a signal you can check yourself: which of your tasks a machine or a service provider near you can already do. If spraying can be contracted out or done by drone where you farm, that task is moving; deciding what to grow and managing the crop is not. Watch whether picking robots become available for the specific crop you grow — that is the change that would reach the hand work.
The agriculture ministry's own estimate is more than a million hectares of cumulative sprayed area in fiscal 2023 and about 1.2 million in fiscal 2024. Cumulative means the same field sprayed several times counts several times. The ministry notes that its method changed between years and that one year was not counted, so the figures show the scale of use rather than a precise growth rate.
It was enacted in June 2024 and took effect on 1 October 2024. It creates two certification schemes — one for farmers who adopt smart-farming technology together with new ways of producing, and one for companies that develop and supply such technology — and certified farmers and businesses can receive financial and other support. It gives the fall in the number of farmers as the reason. It pays for adoption; it does not show how much adoption has happened.
What these judgements rest on#
1 of 6 task judgements on this page are backed by a verified event and 5 are platform inference, each labelled where it appears. Behind them sit 4 technology dimensions, a reconstructed trajectory since language models reached the public, and 2 verified events.
Other roles in the same function#
A company divides its work into functions before it divides it into jobs. These sit in Core delivery (industry-specific) alongside this one — a fact about org charts, not a judgement that they are similar or that they are changing in the same direction.
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