Droids are used to manage the moisture vaporators on which the farm depends for its existence. The Lars family make a reasonable living from the harvesting of atmospheric moisture which they sell to other local sub-surface hydroponic farmers (like Camie's parents), to the nearby settlements like Mos Eisley and which they use to grow their own crops to eat and sell.
The need for human/droid labour is greatest when their and others crops are close to harvest because a) the need for water is at its greatest when the crops are closest to harvest which means that their vaporators need to be running at top efficiency to provide the much-needed water or risk suffering a catastrophic crop harvest failure and b) that the vaporators seem to particularly suffer from sand-clogging at harvest time due to the combination of continuous use, lubricants and (presumably) slightly-higher-than-average moisture in the air.
The Official Star Wars Fact File #8 gives us a little more info about the need for droids and humans to service the towers, clean filters and communicate with the vaporators to ensure that they remain in good working order.
MAINTENANCE:
Exposed to the planet's
frequent sandstorms,
vaporators can easily
become clogged by sand
particles attracted to the
machine's sticky lubricants.
Maintenance droids ore
commonly used to ease
this unending routine.
and
AN UNCERTAIN LIFE: Maintaining the vaporators
is a prime concern for
farmers, many of whom employ
farmhands or droids to monitor and
maintain their vaporators continually, as
loss of water production can often lead
to bankruptcy in such a precarious
enterprise. Using
droids assists the
smooth running of
a moisture farm,
particularly during
the labour-intensive season prior to harvest.
In addition to
agricultural robots and maintenance
droids, it is often necessary to utilize the
more sophisticated robots needed to
translate the binary programming
language used by the vaporators.
