Agricultural Equipment Operator 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.
Agricultural Equipment Operator is Also Know as
In different settings, Agricultural Equipment Operator is titled as
- Baler Operator
- Cutter Operator
- Equipment Operator
- Farm Equipment Operator
- Hay Baler
- Loader Operator
- Packing Tractor Machine Operator
- Rake Operator
- Sprayer
- Windrower Operator
Education and Training of Agricultural Equipment Operator
Agricultural Equipment Operator is categorized in Job Zone One: Little or No Preparation Needed
Experience Required for Agricultural Equipment Operator
Little or no previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is needed for these occupations. For example, a person can become a waiter or waitress even if he/she has never worked before.
Education Required for Agricultural Equipment Operator
Some of these occupations may require a high school diploma or GED certificate.
Degrees Related to Agricultural Equipment Operator
- Bachelor in Agricultural Power Machinery Operation
- Associate Degree Courses in Agricultural Power Machinery Operation
- Masters Degree Courses in Agricultural Power Machinery Operation
Training Required for Agricultural Equipment Operator
Employees in these occupations need anywhere from a few days to a few months of training. Usually, an experienced worker could show you how to do the job.
Related Ocuupations
Some Ocuupations related to Agricultural Equipment Operator in different industries are
- Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse
- Machine Feeders and Offbearers
- Separating, Filtering, Clarifying, Precipitating, and Still Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
- Crushing, Grinding, and Polishing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
- Extruding, Forming, Pressing, and Compacting Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
- Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand
- Extruding and Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers
- Conveyor Operators and Tenders
- Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators
- Pesticide Handlers, Sprayers, and Applicators, Vegetation
- Farm Equipment Mechanics and Service Technicians
- Industrial Machinery Mechanics
- Maintenance Workers, Machinery
- Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators
- Packaging and Filling Machine Operators and Tenders
- Milling and Planing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
- Paving, Surfacing, and Tamping Equipment Operators
- Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing
- Excavating and Loading Machine and Dragline Operators, Surface Mining
- Grinding and Polishing Workers, Hand
What Do Agricultural Equipment Operator do?
- 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.
- 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.
Qualities of Good Agricultural Equipment Operator
- Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
- Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
- Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
- Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
- Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
- Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
- Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
- Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
- Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
- Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
- Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
Tools Used by Agricultural Equipment Operator
- 2-point sprayers
- 3-point sprayers
- Air carts
- Air drill seeders
- Air reels
- Air seeders
- All terrain vehicle ATV discs
- All terrain vehicle ATV harrows
- All terrain vehicle ATV manure spreaders
- All terrain vehicle ATV plows
- All terrain vehicle ATV post hole diggers
- All terrain vehicle ATV rakes
- All terrain vehicle ATV seeders
- All terrain vehicle ATV sprayers
- All terrain vehicles ATV
- Auger movers
- Auger wagons
- Backhoes
- Batch grain dryers
- Bed shapers
- Bedding hippers
- Bucket elevators
- Cargo trucks
- Chaff spreaders
- Chisel disks
- Chisel plows
- Combine cylinders
- Combine draper headers
- Combine grain headers
- Combine header transports
- Combine headers
- Compact tractors
- Compost turners
- Continuous flow grain dryers
- Coulter disks
- Coulter drills
- Coulter rippers
- Crop dividers
- Crop lifters
- Crop shredders
- Disk rippers
- Ditchers
- Dry bulk storage tanks
- Farm tractors
- Feed conveyors
- Feed grinders
- Feed mixer wagons
- Fertilizer blenders
- Fertilizer spreaders
- Field cultivators
- Field rollers
- Flat-ended shovels
- Flotation sprayers
- Forage blowers
- Forage boxes
- Forage harvesters
- Forage tractors
- Forage wagons
- Forklifts
- Garlic harvesters
- Grain augers
- Grain bin aeration fans
- Grain combines
- Grain drills
- Grain heaters
- Grain pumps
- Grain vacuums
- Grain wagons
- Granular applicators
- Grass drills
- Grass seeders
- Gravity wagons
- Hammermills
- Harrow baskets
- Hay bale accumulators
- Hay bale compressors
- Hay bale conveyors
- Hay bale elevators
- Hay bale feeders
- Hay bale forks
- Hay bale loaders
- Hay bale movers
- Hay bale shredders
- Hay bale spears
- Hay bale stackers
- Hay bale trailers
- Hay bale unrollers
- Hay bale wrappers
- Hay balers
- Hay conditioners
- Hay tedders
- Haybines
- Header carriers
- Horizontal feed mixers
- Land finishers
- Land levelers
- Land planes
- Land rollers
- Land scrapers
- Lime spreaders
- Liquid ferilizer applicators
- Liquid storage tanks
- Litter spreaders
- Manure augers
- Manure chopper pumps
- Manure injection systems
- Manure scrapers
- Manure separators
- Manure spreaders
- Manure storage tanks
- Min-till cultivators
- Min-till drills
- Min-till planters
- Mist blowers
- Mower conditioners
- Novariant AutoFarm RTK AutoSteer
- Nurse tanks
- Offset disks
- Pasture renovators
- Peanut digger inverters
- Peanut digger shakers
- Peanut diggers
- Peanut dryers
- Peanut dump carts
- Peanut harvesters
- Plows
- Portable sprayers
- Post drivers
- Post hole diggers
- Power winches
- Rock windrowers
- Roller packers
- Rotary hay rakes
- Rotary hoes
- Rotary tillers
- Row crop cultivators
- Seed bins
- Seed conveyors
- Seed drills
- Seed dryers
- Seed hoppers
- Seed mixers
- Seed scales
- Seed strippers
- Seed tenders
- Seed vacuums
- Self-propelled sprayers
- Shavings spreaders
- Silage baggers
- Silage bins
- Silage boxes
- Silage distributors
- Silage feeders
- Silage mills
- Silage wagons
- Silage wrappers
- Silo spreaders
- Skid sprayers
- Skid steer hay bale spears
- Skid steer loaders
- Skid steer post drivers
- Skid steer post hole diggers
- Skid steer post pullers
- Skid steer rock grapples
- Skid steer rotary tillers
- Skid steer tree cutters
- Soybean combine harvesters
- Sprayer booms
- Sprayer chassis
- Straw and chaff spreaders
- Stump grinders
- Subcompact tractors
- Subsoilers
- Swath turners
- Tandem disks
- Telehandlers
- Threshers
- Tomato harvesters
- Tower grain dryers
- Track tractors
- Tractor guidance systems
- Transfer augers
- Utility vehicles
- V hay rakes
- Weed wipes
- Wheel loaders
- Windrow inverters
- Windrowers
Technology Skills required for Agricultural Equipment Operator
- Farm Management Software Hay and Crop Manager
- Martens Farms Farm Site Mate
- Martens Farms Farm Trac
- Microsoft Access
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft PowerPoint