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Career profile
Agriculture, Fishing, or Forestry Supervisor
Farming, fishing, and forestry supervisors lead crews on crop farms, fish farms, or logging sites.
You decide who does which job each day. Then weather, a broken-down machine, or the work itself can force you to reshuffle those assignments.
A day in the life
Check ripeness before harvest starts
On farms, you size up ripeness and soil condition before sending anyone out or picking where harvest starts.
Show a worker the safe way
Demonstrate a harvest task, then watch a worker take a turn and fix any handling that isn't safe.
Fix a missing timesheet entry
Review the hours log and resolve an entry missing its hours before you finish the pay paperwork.
Quick facts
Experience first
United States
$59,320/year
United States · 2025
3%–4% growth
United States · 2024–2034
Quick orientation
Preparation, pay & outlook
Preparation
Experience firstLearn the production work before leading it; education requirements vary.
Pay
$59,320/yearNational median in 2025; $28.52 per hour.
Outlook
3%–4% growthProjected nationally for 2024–2034.
Fit, tradeoffs & changing tools
You might like this if…
- You enjoy teaching practical skills.
- You can give clear instructions and listen to concerns.
- You like revising plans when conditions change.
Things to weigh
- Outdoor exposure and weeks beyond 40 hours are common.
- Leading people includes correcting performance problems, even when the conversation is uncomfortable.
Where AI may help
Scheduling and payroll software help organize crew time. On farms, automated tractors and harvesting machines also change the work you coordinate.
What people still lead
You still explain tasks, assess conditions, and address unsafe work.
What we can’t predict yet
How much farm machinery takes over will shape whether you spend more time organizing manual crews or coordinating equipment and its operators.
Pay in context
Earnings
Pay varies across workplaces. Compare both the wage and the months and hours you would work.
The national midpoint
The 2025 median was $59,320 a year, or $28.52 an hour. This is not a starting-pay promise.
The national spread
In May 2025, the 10th-percentile annual wage was $38,990 and the 90th-percentile wage was $91,770. These are wage percentiles, not starting and senior salaries.
Workplace matters
In May 2023, supervisors in crop-production support averaged $57,040 a year ($27.42 an hour); logging supervisors averaged $72,160 ($34.69). These historical averages describe different industries, not current job offers.
Openings include replacement hiring
About 8,500 openings per year are projected for 2024–2034, including replacement needs.
Getting started
Work up through a farm crew
- What the route involves
- Start in farm work and learn crop care, tools, and safe equipment use from experienced workers. Most initial farmworker jobs do not require a formal educational credential.
- What it can lead to
- Experience can lead to crew-leader or supervisor positions as you become able to guide other workers.
Combine fisheries study with hatchery work
- What the route involves
- Study fisheries technology or biology, then build experience raising fish. A Washington public-hatchery supervisor route accepts an associate degree plus three years of hatchery work.
- What it can lead to
- That combination can meet the education and fish-culture experience requirements for supervising hatchery staff and production.
- What to check
- That Washington route also requires a valid driver's license and one year of leadership or supervisory duties. Other employers set their own requirements.
Build experience in the kind of operation you want to lead. A farm crew and a fish hatchery can have different entry requirements.
After entry
Career paths
This starts where the entry routes leave off: early work, growing capability, and advancement or specialization.
Get established
Learn your crew's capabilities and build reliable daily schedules.
Handle more of the operation
Build skill beyond daily assignments. In a hatchery, that can mean coordinating pump repairs and planning spending before equipment fails.
Move toward operation management
In agriculture, a later direction is farm or ranch management, taking responsibility for the whole operation rather than one crew.
Where you can work
Crop farms and harvest crews
Planting and harvest create busy seasons. Field conditions and crop readiness shape where you send the crew each day.
- Outdoors
- Field work
- Physical demands
- Safety-sensitive
Logging operations
Sites may be isolated, with long trips from home. You coordinate workers, heavy equipment, and log movement as harvesting locations change.
- Outdoors
- Field work
- Travel
- Safety-sensitive
Public fish hatcheries
Work centers on rearing ponds, fish health, and dependable water systems. Some supervisory jobs include standby coverage for problems outside regular hours.
- Indoors
- Outdoors
- On call
- Safety-sensitive
Try it
See whether the job clicks before you commit to the path.
On paper, plan a morning harvest for four workers: two experienced and two new. Assign picking, sorting, and moving filled containers. Then imagine one experienced worker is absent. Revise the plan and explain who teaches the newcomers. Notice whether coordinating people interests you as much as doing the task.
Sources
- O*NET OnLine / U.S. Department of Labor. First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers. Accessed 2026-10-03.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. May 2023 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics: First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers. Accessed 2026-10-03.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Agricultural Workers. Accessed 2026-10-03.
- Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Fish Hatchery Specialist 4 — Voights Creek Hatchery — 2026-04426. Accessed 2026-10-03.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Logging Workers. Accessed 2026-10-03.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, national estimates. Accessed 2026-09-29.