The Lead Agronomist will be responsible for coordinating the implementation of all field activities for the project under the sorghum value chain. He/she will be responsible for on-boarding agro-entrepreneurs using organization’s business model.
He/she will ensure that sorghum farmers joining the program receive quality extension services, access quality inputs and aggregate and market their produce every season. He/she will be responsible for mobilising appropriate resources to consolidate and report field monitoring data and gather useful learning to inform improvement of the overall performance of the project. He/she will be the key liaison person between the Sightsavers, implementing partners and the management at the counties level.
The Lead Agronomist will report directly to the Agri services Operations Lead and functionality to the Head of Agri services and will be required to collaborate closely with the project consortium member organizations.
Primary location: Migori County with supervision roles in Homa Bay and Kisumu counties
Key Roles and Responsibilities.
- Overall oversight of all intervention activities at the county level in relation to agro-entrepreneur development, farmers engagement and empowerment, crop production, aggregation, and marketing.
- Drive day to day sorghum production activities including management of crop calendar, input procurement, planting, and crop management, harvesting and post – harvest handling
- Responsible for mobilizing agro-entrepreneurs to offer farmer services including input access, advisory, mechanization, aggregation, finance, and markets
- Establish high quality demonstration sites(plots) to be used in delivery of practical farmer trainings by the agro-entrepreneurs.
- Initiate collaboration and local partnerships with the County and Sub – County Agricultural officers, input suppliers and other relevant service providers and identify leverage opportunities capable of adding value to the project
- Monitor and provide timely periodic data to inform collation of reports from the accomplished field activities
- Responsible for ensuring that data reported is of high-quality standards of accuracy, reliability, credibility, and confidentiality and that it is in tandem with the services offered to the farmers.
- Reporting program progress in timelines agreed upon primarily weekly, monthly, and quarterly but may also requested to prepare ad hoc reports
- Work closely with BDS provider to facilitate commercialization of farming systems within the sorghum value chain with specific emphasis to PWDs.
- Organize peer learning sessions and provide feedback on progress of implementation
Required Qualifications and Key Competencies.
- Degree in either of the following disciplines; Agriculture, Agriculture Education and Extension, Agribusiness management.
- Minimum of 5 years’ experience working in related commercialized agricultural value chain either in the private, rural or community development organizations.
- Demonstrated experience in data collection and reporting for similar programs
- Experience working with production groups, cooperatives or contracted farmers will be preferred
- Ability to ride a motorcycle with at-least 2-year experience and a valid riding license.
- Excellent command of Swahili and English.
- Excellent presentation, report writing and communication skills.