Agronomy Services Technician (Two positions)

Centre for Agricultural Transformation

Lilongwe, Malawi

Land O’Lakes Venture37 is looking for qualified and motivated individuals to fill a vacancy for its Global Action -funded The Centre for Agricultural Transformation (CAT) project.

Project Description:

Land O’Lakes Venture37, the University of Minnesota (UMN), Stellenbosch University (SU), and Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) have forged an innovative partnership to establish the Center for Agricultural Transformation (CAT) as the central hub to catalyze Malawi’s agricultural growth. By leveraging our core partners’ scientific, technological and agribusiness expertise and deep regional connections, the CAT will forge integrated research-to-impact pathways that reduce productivity gaps between men and women and foster diversified, resilient and healthy smallholder households, particularly those transitioning from tobacco farming to alternative livelihoods.

The CAT will be a world class hub for creating, piloting, and scaling appropriate science, technology, and business models that will transform smallholder tobacco farmers’ lives and Malawi’s agriculture sector in general. This center of excellence aims to uniquely combine research, smallholder farming, and large-scale commercialization in a manner that facilitates transformational agricultural development in Malawi. We envision the CAT as an anchor institution in the global ag-tech innovation ecosystem, where reimagination, experimentation, and refinement of new ideas take place through the intermingling of cutting-edge research and development (R&D), market research, evidence-based decision making, new business models and product pilots, and entrepreneurs.

Position Summary

The Agronomy Services Technician will be part of the Science, Technology and Innovation team and will be responsible for the day-to-day operations and management of the CAT land used for trialing, demonstration and promotion of scalable technologies that can be used by farmers (including smallholders) to improve their productivity.

Reporting & Supervision:

The position will report to the Agronomy Services Manager and will periodically have a few field workers as direct reports.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

· Day-to-day management of CAT land holdings at the CAT Smart Farm

· Facilitating the establishment of CAT demonstration and trial plots and lead the day-to-day operationalization of the CAT land holdings.

· Ensuring that land is prepared, planted, cultivated, maintained, and harvested in a timely and quality manner in collaboration with partner stakeholders.

· Assisting with the product selection process and the development of planting and irrigation schedules, and timelines.

· Collecting seed, plant, and soil samples in readiness for testing for nutritional deficiencies, diseases, or other changes.

· Keeping detailed records regarding fields, customers, crops, and samples.

· Assisting in developing technical training materials for maximizing productivity of identified products in collaboration with key stakeholders.

· Guided by the Agronomy Services Manager, set, organize and facilitate demo tour and field day events for enhanced smallholder farmer patronage and expanded product knowledge, adoption of best agricultural practices.

· Oversee and coordinate temporary labour needs.

· Monitoring Smart Farm plots/fields to ensure insect pests and diseases are spotted and timely managed in consultation with the Agronomy Services Manager.

· Perform all aspects of operational functions including but not limited to farm equipment preparations and operation, seed preparation for planting, GIS applications.

· Assist the Agronomy Services Manager in planning and organizing tasks such as sourcing designated remote sites, developing contracts, site layout, database set up, required fertilizer and crop protection products.

Required Skills and Minimum Qualifications:

· Diploma in Agriculture, preferably in the agronomy-related field.

· A minimum of 3 years’ relevant experience in similar position.

· Experience in implementing trial and demonstration plots for a public or private sector organization.

· Demonstrated experience and sound understanding of farmer technology adoption models.

· Capacity to write reports on field activities and results under tight deadlines.

· Highly developed conceptual, analytical and innovative field problem-solving ability.

· Strong inter-personal skills, self-motivated, result-driven and ability to work without supervision, possessing a strong work ethic, and maintaining a good attendance record.

· Good command of English and Chichewa, spoken and written.