Agronomy Officer – 2 Positions (Amudat and Karenga)

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 PROGRAM/DEPARTMENT SUMMARY:

The $41 million USAID Food for Peace Activity (Apolou) and the $5 million USAID Resilience Challenge Fund (RCF) Activity support agriculturalists, agro-pastoralists, and pastoralist households living across the districts of Amudat, Kotido, Kaabong, Karenga, and Moroto in Karamoja. Apolou is implemented by a consortium of actors led by Mercy Corps, including Save the Children, Whave Solutions, four local partners (KAPDA, NARWOA and Riam Riam) and Tufts University’s Feinstein International Centre (FIC). Apolou’s goal is to “improve the overall food and nutrition security of vulnerable households in Kaabong, Kotido, Moroto and Amudat districts within the Karamoja region,” and has major 4 objectives as follows:

1. Inclusive and effective governance contributes to food and nutrition security
2. Adolescent girls, Pregnant and Lactating Women, and Children under 5 are nutritionally secure
3. Reduced incidences of WASH related diseases
4. Improved livelihoods and income support household food security

The RCF program works in the districts of Kaabong and Amudat, with the goal to “Improve the veterinary governance and increase public and private investment in disease prevention, surveillance, control and response systems to strengthen productive assets for improved resilience in Karamoja.” RCF has the following objectives:

1. Increased domestic resource allocation into animal health services in Karamoja
2. Central and local government develop animal health services capacity-strengthening plan for the Karamoja region
3. Disease control plan for economically prioritized diseases (PPR and FMD) developed and implemented
4. Private sector animal health development strategy developed and rolled out

Job Summary

The  Agronomy Officer will work to support the achievement of transformation of attitudes and behavior to improve the economic future and quality of life of Apolou program beneficiaries. They will have to provide technical supervision to Agriculture Village Agents (AVAs) who drive the implementation of effective agricultural extension and advisory services, incorporating gender into program activities. He or she will be responsible for spearheading training, monitoring with continuous reporting activities of Farmer Enterprise Groups (FEGs). The position holder will spearhead the program strategy of improving the viability of the Farmer Enterprise groups through capacity building on the targeted viability dimensions in order to improve their sales, working closely with different service providers. The  Agronomy Officer will directly be in the frontline and responsible for successful practical field implementation and scale up of the parmagardening and resilience design approach for smallholder farmers.  The position holder will achieve this in liaison with the different program community platforms such as the AVAs, lead or model farmers, MCGs, SILCs, Youth groups, Farmer groups, Enterprise Groups, and working closely with the private sector actors and the Local government line departments.

Roles and Responsibilities

Program Implementation

• Participate in developing messages, structures and systems to continually improve Apolou`s Agricultural Private sector led Extension Services to improve the productivity of poor farmers and help them turn that productivity into improved food security and livelihoods.
• Directly supervise the AVAs to take lead in Apolou Agricultural Extension Work and supervise AVA field activities to ensure effective use of resources and successful targeting of services to the most vulnerable beneficiaries’ farmers in northern and Southern Karamoja.
• Take lead on the implementation of the FEGs targeted viability dimensions to improve their sales – ranging from; organisation management, access to inputs and extension, access to finance, aggregation and marketing. Working closely with other sectors, local government and private sector players (banks, seed companies, traders, agro-dealer, and processing companies, among others).
• Ensure farmers have access to weather information and advisories working closely with UNMA.
• Ensure activities are implemented in line with USAID compliance requirements – and this will be achieved through following the program Environmental Mitigation and Monitoring Plan (EMMP) for the agronomy targeted interventions.
• Actively participate in community mobilization and sensitization for adoption of best Farmer field school agronomic practices.
• Identify training needs, production constraints and devise solutions to address the problems at hand and inform the sector lead.
• Conduct training of Apolou AVAs on selected topics in the extension curriculum and Farmer Field School and ensure training is in accordance with the guidelines.
• Collect, compile, verify, enter and keep data on Apolou program beneficiaries to inform programming, this will involve collecting all Agricultural Village Agent`s monthly reports from the field.
• Work hand in hand with the local agro-dealers and other input and output dealers link farmers to access genuine agro-input implements from agro-input dealers, retailers, agents or stockists.
• Coordinate and work closely with district production department/sub county authorities to ensure that they are informed about the program activities through courtesy visits to the Sub county headquarters of program operation and at the production department at the district.
• Prepare timely weekly, monthly and activity progress reports by providing data to support evidence of tasks accomplished by all AVAs and other work plan activities accomplished.
• Carryout ground field verification of AVAs reports to capture the face and rate of farmer adoption to new technologies and better farming practices.
• Participate in sector review meetings, program reviews, assessments, monitoring activities, learning and evaluations.
• Sensitize community leadership on different Apolou thematic areas i.e. Governance, MCHN, WASH, Gender, SBCC, Adolescents and Livelihoods.
• Conduct participant identification exercises for the different activities in the community.
• Mobilize participants for planned activities in respective locations for technical teams to work with.
• Coordinate with all sectors in Apolou to ensure complementary approaches, monitor implementation of project activities and document learnings and success stories.
• Collaborate with fellow facilitations to ensure team success, including but not limited to logistics coordination, temporary support during leave, etc., as advised by facilitation Officers.
• Provide supervision and technical support to the agronomy assistant to ensure quality implementation of work.

Gender And Youth Integration 

• Ensure that program activities apply gender equity and youth empowerment principles, and meet the varying needs of men, boys, women and girls and other vulnerable groups.
• Monitoring and Evaluation
• Collect, Compile, verify, enter and Keep data on Apolou program beneficiaries to inform programing, this will involve collecting all Agriculture Village Agent monthly reports from the field.
• Carry out ground field verification if AVA reports to capture the face and rate of farmer adoption to new technologies and better farming practices
• Verify the existing groups served by the sector and working closely with MEL team to update the database.

Influence and Representation

• Represent the agronomy sector in any Apolou Agriculture extension and advisory services in Karenga and/or Amudat districts.
• Work closely with the DLG extension staff and at the Sub County level to harmonies the Apolou objectives and the DLG plan

Ethics and Integrity

• All Mercy Corps staff are expected to behave ethically and demonstrate highest integrity in their professional and personal life. Mercy Corps has zero tolerance to any form of fraud, corruption, abuse, harassment, or exploitation. Any breach of our policies or misconduct will lead to disciplinary action or may lead to termination.

Security

• Ensure data protection policies are adhered to, establishing security controls for software, hardware, and archive beneficiary databases.
• Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies as determined by country leadership
• Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies

Organizational Learning

• As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient, and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.
• Accountability to Beneficiaries
• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
• Sensitize communities on Apolou`s CARM system and encourage them to share feedback through promoted channels

Supervisory Responsibility:  Agronomy assistant

Accountability to Beneficiaries: Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts towards accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field programs.

Reports Directly to: Nutrition and agronomy advisor

Works Directly with: MEL Officer and Assistant, District Implementation team, Gender and Youth, Support Departments including Finance and Operations,

QUALIFICATION AND EXPERIENCE:

• A minimum of a Diploma in Agriculture or related studies, a degree is preferred.
• At least 3 years of field experience in implementing gender sensitive agricultural extension services, agricultural marketing , perma gardening/permaculture, Farmer Field school,, and similar relevant activities can apply.
• The Candidate must be passionate about farming and working with farmers and rural communities.
• The successful candidate will also have excellent English language, verbal and written communication skills, fluency in Ng’akarimojong is required for Karenga, Swahili and/or Pokot for Amudat.
• Candidates must be willing to and able to travel extensively to the field and program sites.
• Computer skill i.e. MS Office, MS excel and valid motorcycle riding permit is an added advantage.

Application closing date: February 09^th 2022