AI-Based Farm Equipment May Increase Worker Safety But Cost Jobs

The rise of autonomous and artificial intelligence-aided farm machinery promises to improve safety for agricultural workers, but the change will likely come with the loss of jobs and unfamiliar challenges for workplace regulators.

The new technology includes self-guided tractors, autonomous pesticide sprayers, and towed equipment that can decide whether a plant sprout is a valuable crop or a pesty dandelion.

The automated equipment can improve safety by removing operators from hazardous tasks, such as towing a pesticide sprayer, and reduces how many people are needed for hot-weather, labor-intensive tasks like weeding.

“If you can substitute a worker and their exposure to a potential hazard with a machine or technology, that is typically viewed as a real positive from the occupational safety and health perspective,” said John Shutske, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and agriculture safety specialist.

From 2017 to 2021, an average of 232 workers died annually in crop production, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The fatality rate for agriculture workers in 2021 was 14.5 for every 100,000 full-time equivalent positions, while the rate for all private-industry occupations was 3.6.

Lasers Replace Labor

Pete Maturino, agriculture director for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 in northern California, recalled a recent demonstration at a unionized farm of an automated weeder that uses lasers.

“It recognizes what is a head of lettuce—leaf versus weed—and zaps only the weeds,” Maturino said.

This means workers don’t have to go through fields manually cutting and pulling out the plants.

But automation could also lead to long-term job losses.

“We worked it out to where nobody is going to be let go,” Maturino said. “The work is still there. As to how long, that’s another question.”

Shutske recalled a different weeder demonstration where the operator, who used an iPad to adjust the machine’s cutting specifications, said one machine would do the job of 24 workers.

“While we have a big labor shortage in agriculture, these machines probably do have significant potential to change the need for workers,” Shutske said.

Gradual Acceptance

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers trade group estimates there are 50 companies producing autonomous farm machinery, and they are just beginning to offer it commercially.

The use of automated machinery in fields, orchards, and vineyards continues to be rare.

“That technology is available and there are certainly prototypes out there that allow for a completely driverless situation,” said Curt Blades, senior vice president for agriculture services at the Milwaukee-based AEM.

One company selling an autonomous tractor is Monarch Tractor in Livermore, Calif.

“If the goal is to improve worker safety, we should actually increase the adoption of smart technology on farms because right now it is not a safe environment in many cases,” said Monarch CEO Praveen Penmetsa.

At first sight, Monarch’s machine looks like most new small tractors. But the roof of the driver’s cab contains an array of cameras and sensors intended to guide the tractor and stop it from striking objects in its path. There is no exhaust pipe, as the tractor is battery powered.

Penmetsa said autonomous operation is an option for Monarch tractor owners, but requires user training.

Monarch also must provide autonomous operation software that is crop-specific. So far, it supports wine grape vineyards, blueberry fields, orchards, and some dairy farm tasks.

Regulatory Concerns

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and most of its state counterparts don’t have workplace safety regulations specifically for autonomous farm machinery.

OSHA didn’t respond to a request to discuss its position on the technology. In recent years, the agency hasn’t pursued rules to deal with other automated technologies, such as self-driving warehouse forklifts and robots that function alongside workers.

A spokesperson for the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration said the state’s version of federal OSHA’s general duty clause could apply to automated farm machinery. The clause requires employers to provide workplaces free of known hazards that can be feasibly mitigated.

However, the ability to regulate farm operations is limited by a federal law that restricts the agencies from inspecting or citing farms that employ 10 or fewer workers annually.

An exception is California, where a 1970’s-era rule is the focus of debate between the farm industry and the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, often called Cal/OSHA.

“All self-propelled equipment shall, when under its own power and in motion, have an operator stationed at the vehicular controls,” the rule states.

Karen Tynan, chair of Ogletree Deakins PC’s West Coast occupational safety practice in Sacramento, said farm technology has moved beyond the rule.

“The way the code is written, it assumes there is an operator operating the equipment,” Tynan said.

Tynan added she is unaware of any cases where Cal/OSHA cited an employer for using an autonomous tractor. It appears that judges in California administrative courts haven’t been asked to clarify how the rule applies to today’s farms.

Bryan Little, director of employment policy for the California Farm Bureau Federation, said most tractor tasks don’t involve workers being near the machine, other than harvesting activities such as picking melons.

“The fact that no one is nearby doesn’t necessarily mean Cal/OSHA isn’t going to try to claim that it’s a ‘workplace,’” Miller said.

Since 2018, the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board, which approves the rules Cal/OSHA enforces, has three times turned down petitions to update the rule requiring an “operator” or form an advisory committee to make recommendations on revisions.

During a three-hour hearing in March, labor groups opposed the committee’s creation for several reasons. They cited a need to first finish other Cal/OSHA rulemakings, doubts about the automated technology’s reliability, and the belief that many businesses were motivated to adopt it not for safety, but for eliminating jobs to save money.

At the hearing, Mitch Stieger, the California Labor Federation’s senior legislative advocate, argued against the advisory committee, saying automation is driven by cost cutting. “Technology fails all the time,” he said.

Moving Forward

Monarch has a variance from Cal/OSHA to field test its autonomous tractors in vineyards and share data with the agency.

So far, all the tasks done under the variance have involved assignments, such as pesticide spraying and weeding, that don’t entail workers being near tractors, Penmetsa said.

The CEO said no other state has sought to restrict their use, and the machines will be available nationwide and in Canada by the end of 2024.

University of Wisconsin’s Shutske said that in the absence of government rules, manufacturers often depend on industry consensus standards to set safety design and performance requirements.

The international consensus standard ISO 18497: Agricultural Machinery and Tractors covers autonomous tractors, Shutske said.

“It is undergoing a significant revision right now. It’s not going to be coming out until probably the latter part of 2023,” he said.

With or without regulations, most workplace safety experts agreed more farm tasks will inevitably move to automation.

“It’s progress and it’s going to happen,” the UFCW’s Maturino said.