Job Description

Reporting to the Project Manager, the primary role of this position will be to ensure that households are supported to become more food secure and that the nutritional needs of vulnerable children are met through dietary diversity and adopting hygienic and healthy practices, among other interventions.

The job holder will support organized smallholder groups to increase their crop production, enlightening them on the need to strike a balance between the nutritional and economic values of certain crops as well as enhance post-harvest handling practices and optimal utilisation of crop yields.

Duties and responsibilities

1. Ensure that the farmers and farmer groups have access to quality inputs through partnerships between input dealers, village agents, and the farmer groups producing quality declared seed.
2. Provide extension services to the farmers on the recommended agronomic practices, including the timing of planting, spacing, fertilizer and other input application and harvesting.

• Ensure that the farmers harvest at the right time and using the right technologies to minimize pre and postharvest losses, and meet the quality expectations of the traders, processors and exporters.

1. Facilitate the establishment and maintenance of demonstration gardens and dissemination of improved sunflower, soyabeans, groundnuts and sesame technologies that can significantly increase the productivity of the resource poor smallholder farmers through access to knowledge and skills needed to transform their farming practices.
2. Facilitate increased adoption of improved, certified commercial oil seed varieties through demonstrations  
3. Mainstreaming cross-cutting issues including gender, HIV/AIDS, poverty, natural resource management etc, that impact sustainable commercial oil seed production.

• Working with and building the capacity of the Public Extension Workers and community extension workers to provide extension and other value chain services to the farmers and farmer groups.

Job requirement

• A Minimum of a Masters degree in agricultural, Agri business or any other related field.
• 2-5 years demonstrable experience in working in food/nutrition security programs.
• Experience with donor funded food security and nutrition projects for vulnerable communities will be an added advantage.
• Knowledge of the Farmer field schools approach is a requirement
• Ability to provide technical support to community group in improved agricultural practices and carrying out needs assessment processes with participatory approaches.
• Knowledge of the national food and nutrition security strategy as well as agriculture development programmes such as NAADS.
• Good knowledge on behavioral change communication on nutritional and feeding practices.

Skills Required

• Team Leader
• Computer Literacy
• Nutrition
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills. Superior English writing skills with clear fluency (Level IV) in English and required.