Website Care India

POSITION/DESIGNATION

Technical Officer Agriculture

GRADE/LEVEL

Grade G

PROJECT/UNIT

Marginalized rural women have increased their resilience to climate changes and impact and take part in decision-making processes-Shakti

PROJECT DURATION

34 months (Till 29th February 2024)

REPORTS TO

Project Manager

LOCATION

Bhawanipatna, Kalahandi District, Odisha.

TRAVEL

80% including daily field travel, district head quarter, state and national travel as required.

ABOUT US

CARE is a not-for-profit organisation working in India for over 70 years, focusing on alleviating poverty and social injustice. We do this through well-planned and comprehensive projects in health, education, livelihoods and disaster preparedness and response. Our overall goal is the empowerment of women and girls from poor and marginalised communities leading to improvement in their lives and livelihoods.

During FY 2020-21, CARE India directly reached out to 52.7 million people through 53 programmes across 18 states, covering more than 130+ districts. We are part of the CARE International Confederation, working in 100 countries for a world where people live with dignity and security.

CARE India seeks a world of hope, tolerance, and social justice, where poverty has been overcome and people live in dignity and security.

Our goal is to ensure that women and girls from the most marginalized communities are empowered, live in dignity and their households have secure and resilient lives. CARE India aims to accomplish this goal by working with 50 million people to help them have quality health, education, livelihoods and overcome the effects of disasters.

Our employees are committed to CARE’s values, Code of Conduct, and safeguarding commitments towards a safe workplace for all, including the principle of ‘do no harm’. They are also responsible to uphold and strengthen our safeguarding commitments in their role. To know more about our safeguarding policies please visit our website link given below.

PROJECT DETAILS

The Project proposes an initiative which addresses the underlying causes of poor smallholders’ including women’s inequitable participation and their empowerment in a sustainable crop/livestock production system contributing to the productivity.

Based on this analysis of the underlying causes of inequitable participation and low productive engagement of poor smallholders, CARE India envisions changes in four interrelated outcomes areas to be essential for achieving the goal. The four change areas are:

Increased adoption of improved practices in farming, livestock rearing, and climate resilient nutrition sensitive agriculture among smallholders, especially women farmers.
Strengthened collectives of smallholder farmers catering to their needs and promotion and strengthening of FPCs/farmer producer group.
Increased returns to smallholder producers, especially women through market linkages and participation in value chains, access in state and national level.
Positive and enabling attitudes of panchayat raj institutions (PRIs), service providers and market institutions, towards the impact group with support of digit technology.

JOB SUMMARY

Technical Officer Agriculture is to be primarily contracted for 34 months (may be extended as per need/ requirement) to support the project located in Kalahandi District, Odisha. Technical Officer Agriculture is the resource person to bring in innovation, project execution and strategies to realize the vision of sustainable food systems from production of diverse foods to assist in marketing of agricultural produce supporting small and marginal landholding farmers particularly women farmers under the FPC/ farmer producers groups.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

He/ she will develop appropriate strategy, implementation models and intervention roadmap to promote sustainable layering of climate resilience in agricultural production systems through various water retention and efficient water usage models to ensure higher multi-crops, crop diversification and prevention of crop loss due to water shortage on farm lands and also kitchen gardens, besides supporting diverse water needs in diverse farm and livestock e.g. goattery, mushroom, poultry, etc.
Responsible for water structure and irrigation systems design, maintenance and repairs with macro-micro projects like dug well, water sheds, drip irrigation, etc with farmers and community empowerment, training and community mobilization and also resource and labour contribution from the farmers and community.
Create systems of community ownership and management with contribution for design creation, maintenance and repairs and also take lead in integrating resources from diverse sources like agriculture department, watershed mission, etc and also private sectors, CSRs in the 20 village clusters under the project.
Responsible for ensuring technical appropriateness and rigor of water stress reduction in agriculture and allied activities, ensure climate resilient agriculture production, crop diversification and multi-cropping in the area with community mobilization, participatory planning, accessing subsidized schemes, government department support, etc.
Ensure that the target number of 20 villages and households are extended technical support strictly adhering to the SOP, continuous monitoring, leadership of Community Resource Persons (CRPs), M & E systems, timely procurement, following accounts & procurement systems, etc with planning, ownership and prior approval of project manager and Deputy Director.
Ensure that water challenges are addressed on time to support the project with the required number of demo plots in pulses /legume /vegetable cultivation and demo sites in kitchen gardening as per the workplan are established strictly adhering to the SOPs.
To ensure technical support to demo farmers as well as influenced farmers as and when required on water usage.
Understand issues and problems faced in the field, aggregate and seek advice.
from senior colleagues as per requirement.
Producing designs, both initial outlines and full plans, timely monitoring, on-field demonstration and support to CRPs and farmers, donor reporting for cli ate resilient nutrition sensitive agriculture production.
Support to the team in designing and organizing state level events, policy discourse and representing various forums.
Actively participate in discussion forums, workshops, seminars, write shops and other appropriate events.
Produce papers, learning materials and bulletins from time to time for wider packaging of project & CISSD.
Identify policy advocacy agenda the project and develop learning material and plans accordingly for ready dissemination.
He/ she will plan, design, build capacity, support concurrent monitoring, necessitate evaluation studies and facilitate knowledge products around approaches, strategies and tools to generate demand around and secure sustainable models encompassing, sustainable production of nutrition rich food.

Other responsibilities:

Be accountable for timely accomplishment of responsibilities under his/her thematic area line items with respect to the project DIP and Workplan and generate adequate Means of Verifications (MoVs).
Raise purchase requests (PRs) and closure of PRs in consultation with the supervisor, for products and services deemed necessary towards undertaking prior-approved project activities with discussion and prior approval of the Project Manager and Deputy Director as per CISSD Procurement Policy and functions Provide domain related documentation such as training reports, technical assessment summary, activity cost-estimation, etc.
Perform any other task assigned by the line manager as per organizational requirement.

KEY RELATIONSHIPS

Be proactive and take self-initiative in all spheres of work.
Treat all the project stakeholders on equal manner.
Deliver on work and always follow up with people.
Participate in different forums for showcasing of project initiatives.
Be positive in shouldering responsibilities.
Contribute to development and dissemination of knowledge products.

QUALIFICATION & EXPERIENCE

Essential:

Master of Science in Agriculture /Diploma or B.Tech in Agriculture Engineering from reputed institution/Government agriculture university with related experience at least 5-10 year.
OR
Postgraduate in Rural Development with at least 5-10 years of working experience in Agriculture and Water Structure sector.
Hands on experience in working extensively on diverse water structure design, development and implementation and working experience of directly working with farmers on the ground to support climate resilient agriculture with crop diversification and kitchen gardening.
Experience in supporting and handholding farmers in adopting and adapting to best practices and newer climate resilient farming through adoptive water and other technologies.
Experience of working in a large project and as part of a diverse team to promote and strengthen FPC and farmer producer groups of small women farmers.

Preferred

Familiarity with agro-ecological conditions and climate challenges in similar geographies in the country and exclusively desirable is experience of work in Odisha.
Experience and interest in working with women farmers and their groups at grass-root level.
Understanding of adult learning principles.

SKILLS & COMPETENCIES

Communication skills:

Able to articulate and communicate well to all stakeholders (both verbally and in writing) in a manner that meets the different needs of different audiences.
Able to relate to the context, relevance, needs and aspirations of the audience and communicate sensibly.
Strong facilitation /training and communication skills.
Proficiency in MS Office Suite mainly Word, PowerPoint and Excel, Internet.

Language skills:

Able to read, write and speak in local language (Odia) at an expert level while with the IP and develop, and present the project findings in English, Hindi and Odia with the relevant stakeholders

Research skills:

Able to conduct primary and secondary research for identifying the newest trends and incorporate them in program / process approach.
Able to identify the research questions based on his/her field observations and probe the questions further to give the project team some workable solutions.
Understanding of tribal development and gender dimensions within Climate Smart Agriculture and Nutrition Security domains.
Able to analyze the project statistics and enable the team to understand the trend of the project.

Team Management & Collaboration / People skills:

Ability work in a team and build capacity and connect to community stakeholders.
High social intelligence: able to engage and influence teams, create relationships of trust with stakeholders
Adept at co-creation: naturally collaborative and solutions focused
Conflict resolution: comfortable with negotiating and resolving conflict; seeking clarity and testing assumptions
able to reflect, empathetic, and a good listener

Strategic Thinking and Analysis:

Big picture / critical thinker: able to think clearly and rationally and select the best method as appropriate. Capable of understanding the period and timing of implementations for better results.
Connector: able to spot gaps, establish needs and opportunities.
Able to fuel the project deliverables with improvised approach.
Willingness to learn from and replicate best practices from elsewhere.

Change Management:

Resilient: able to deal well with ambiguity, uncertainty, and change
flexible: able to adapt well to shifting priorities
versatile: able to juggle different and conflicting priorities
Operational excellence (Project / Program / Process management):
able to successfully manage project/process deliverables in stipulated time and budget
able to incorporate feedback and continually work on project / process improvement
able bring innovations in project deliverables

To apply for this job please visit careindiacareers.peoplestrong.com.