Job Check
Soil and Plant Scientists
Conduct research in breeding, physiology, production, yield, and management of crops and agricultural plants or trees, shrubs, and nursery stock, their growth in soils, and control of pests; or study the chemical, physical, biological, and mineralogical composition of soils as they relate to plant or crop growth. May classify and map soils and investigate effects of alternative practices on soil and crop productivity.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Communicate research or project results to other professionals or the public or teach related courses, seminars, or workshops.People already use AI for this at work
- 02Develop methods of conserving or managing soil that can be applied by farmers or forestry companies.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 03Provide information or recommendations to farmers or other landowners regarding ways in which they can best use land, promote plant growth, or avoid or correct problems such as erosion.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 04Conduct experiments to develop new or improved varieties of field crops, focusing on characteristics such as yield, quality, disease resistance, nutritional value, or adaptation to specific soils or climates.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 05Investigate soil problems or poor water quality to determine sources and effects.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 06Investigate responses of soils to specific management practices to determine the use capabilities of soils and the effects of alternative practices on soil productivity.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 07Conduct experiments to investigate the underlying mechanisms of plant growth and response to the environment.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 08Identify degraded or contaminated soils and develop plans to improve their chemical, biological, or physical characteristics.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 09Develop new or improved methods or products for controlling or eliminating weeds, crop diseases, or insect pests.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 10Provide advice regarding the development of regulatory standards for land reclamation or soil conservation.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job loss5%of this job’s work time goes to tasks that people already do with Claude at work, counting tasks where AI only helps as half (2026).Anthropic, 2026
49%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 63% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 47% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
AI touches every main task of this job in some way. Your edge is judgment: knowing when AI’s work is right, and checking it before it counts.