The Task Exposure Indexv2026.Q3
Occupation · SOC 13-1021.00 · Job Zone 4

AI exposure: Buyers and Purchasing Agents, Farm Products

Purchase farm products either for further processing or resale. Includes tree farm contractors, grain brokers and market operators, grain buyers, and tobacco buyers. May negotiate contracts.

Reading this score

computed

43.8% of this occupation's weighted task load is exposed, which puts Buyers and Purchasing Agents, Farm Products at the 79th percentile of 923 occupations. The capability is largely there. Its average task scores 2.6 out of 4 on what a current system can produce, and the frictions that hold other jobs in place are comparatively weak here.

What holds the line here is context. Across this occupation's 9 tasks it averages 1.78 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work depends on knowledge the model cannot hold. Much of this job runs on things that were never written down: what this particular organisation does, what happened last week, what the person across the table actually meant. That context is the barrier, and it erodes as systems are given more access.

The most exposed thing this job does is Review orders to determine product types and quantities required to meet demand, at 86.7%. The least is Estimate land production possibilities, surveying property and studying factors such as crop..., at 6.7%. A gap of 80.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.

Within business and financial operations occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 47.5% across the group's 48 roles, with 29 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.

What would move this score. Of 9 tasks, 6 are currently banded exposed, 1 assisted and 2 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take cheaper ways to verify output, since the cost of checking is currently doing more to hold this work in place than the cost of producing it. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.

Task by task

9 tasks, O*NET 31.0
TaskExposedAssistedUntouchedImportanceBand
Review orders to determine product types and quantities required to meet demand.86.7%13.3%0.0%3.82exposed
Maintain records of business transactions and product inventories, reporting data to companies or government agencies as necessary.55.4%32.1%12.5%4.11exposed
Purchase, for further processing or for resale, farm products, such as milk, grains, or Christmas trees.50.0%25.0%25.0%4.53exposed
Examine or test crops or products to estimate their value, determine their grade, or locate any evidence of disease or insect damage.50.0%25.0%25.0%3.20exposed
Arrange for transportation or storage of purchased products.45.0%30.0%25.0%3.64exposed
Arrange for processing or resale of purchased products.40.0%35.0%25.0%3.62exposed
Negotiate contracts with farmers for the production or purchase of farm products.23.3%26.7%50.0%4.27assisted
Coordinate or direct activities of workers engaged in cutting, transporting, storing, or milling products and maintaining records.13.3%11.7%75.0%3.49untouched
Estimate land production possibilities, surveying property and studying factors such as crop rotation history, soil fertility, or irrigation facilities.6.7%18.3%75.0%2.22untouched

Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean. 1 task(s) lacked a usable O*NET weight and are shown but excluded from the weighting.

Where the score comes from

judged

Every task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.

DimensionMeanScale
Capability2.610-4
Embodiment0.560-3
Presence1.060-3
Accountability1.390-3
Context1.780-3
Verification cost1.500-3

What this means in practice

Where most of a role's weighted task load is exposed, the work that survives is usually the part of the job nobody wrote into the job description: deciding what should be produced rather than producing it, and being answerable for the result. The tasks lowest on this page are a better guide to where to spend your time than any general advice about the future of work.

Occupations either side of this one

The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.

Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.