Title: Agriculture Research Development Officer / Project Scientist III
Location: Districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh India (Varanasi, Ghazipur, Mirzapur, Azamgarh, Gorakhpur, Deoria, Basti, Sidhhartnagar, Bahraich )
Employment Type: Fixed Term
No of Vacancies: 9
Job Summary
The Project Scientist III will support the implementation of agriculture extension activities under the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) project. The role involves field demonstrations, farmer training, data collection, machinery operation, and coordination with Support Organizations (SOs), Farmer Producer Groups (FPGs), Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), service providers, and local stakeholders to ensure effective delivery of project objectives.
About the Hiring Arrangement
This recruitment is being conducted by Starshield Group for deployment under a major agriculture development project implemented in collaboration with the IRRI. The selected candidates will be engaged on the payroll of Starshield Group and will be deployed to support field-level activities under the IRRI-supported project.
Please note that while the role will involve working closely with IRRI project teams and stakeholders, the employment, compensation, and administrative management will be handled solely by Starshield Group.
Key Responsibilities
Purpose
- Plan, coordinate, and implement demonstrations in assigned districts, overseeing accurate field data collection by using appropriate & recommended tools and documentation to generate insights and prepare technical reports.
- Supervise the day-to-day delivery of services related to crop production, management of farm machinery and equipment, seed production, harvest, agrochemical services and pest control ensuring timely, effective and cost-efficient implementation of farm operations in farmer’s fields etc.Plan and organize farmer training, exposure visit, traveling seminars, interaction and feedback sessions, field days on different agricultural technologies and seed systems, and GIS activities across all work packages in collaboration with different stakeholders.
- Troubleshooting and assist service providers, farmer producer companies and progressive farmers through hands-on training for extension of technologies.
- Represent IRRI at various platforms including regular monitoring meetings with the other partners, documenting different recommendations to be shared with NARES partners.
- Coordinate with the SOs, collaborators, enumerators/ contract workers, KVK scientists, district agricultural officers on day-to-day activities, collaborative activities and provide guidance as necessary to ensure quality standards.
- Monitor pests and diseases and ensure timely treatments in consultation with specialists.
- Assist implementing partners for effective implementation of project activities.
- Prepare presentations and reports as per the requirements of the project.
- Advance a safe and healthy work environment through the continuous development of processes and policies that are compliant to the IRRI standard guidelines with effective record keeping.
Engagement
- Coordinate the transfer of appropriate agronomic technologies, providing technical inputs and advisory support to partners and community organizations, while guiding the organization of trainings and demonstrations to strengthen partner capacity and promote farmer-to-farmer diffusion of best management practices
- Develop strong rapports and partnerships with SOs, FPGs and service providers.
- Work closely with various stakeholders including SOs, KVKs, FPCs, public and private sectors, suppliers, service providers, seed producers, etc.
- Engagement with project objective leads, subject matter experts for field experiments and data collection.
- Monitoring the progress and execution of the project activities, collecting data, and organizing them in prescribed formats for the assigned districts.
Delivery
- Establish and maintain strong collaborations with state departments, agricultural universities, SOs, FPGs/FPCs, service providers, NGOs, extension offices, and private sector technology providers to ensure coordinated and effective implementation of project activities.
- Contribute the efforts on bi-annual/annual or any other report in preparation of the project.
- Update the execution of planned activities in collaboration with partners to supervisor/project leaders/collaborators.
- Support the development and use of training materials with local partners.
- Organize and coordinate exposure visits, training, farmer field days, and equipment demonstrations for farmers and other actors.
- Convert encoded data into database and help in developing the articles for newsletters.
- Contribute to the development of training materials.
Perform any other relevant duties as assigned by supervisor from time to time
Eligibility Criteria
Qualification:
Bachelor’s degree in agriculture science or agriculture engineering with minimum of 4 years of relevant work experience in seed systems, crop management, agronomy, mechanization, post-harvest, capacity building, pest /disease management in a project related to agriculture extension and research Or Master’s degree in Agricultural science
Experience & Skills (mandatory):
- Has basic knowledge of MS Office programs such as Word and Excel
- Has experience in office related work
- Has experience in data collection
- Good experience of conducting agronomy trials
- Understanding of experiment designs
- Good written and oral communication skills
- Team player, able to organize work independently
- Data collection and tabulation for analysis and report writing
- Experience of imparting training to farmers
Preferred
- Experience of working with NARES partners, service providers, fabricators, and farmer groups to test, demonstrate and train farmers and other value chain actors
- Has experience in rice-wheat cropping system production
Key Performance Indicators
- Field trials/experiments/survey activities implemented according to protocol and approved standard and
- procedures, within specified timeline
- Timely execution of meetings, training, demonstrations and dissemination of information
- Accurate and complete data provided according to monitoring schedule and agreed timelines
- Clear and regular communication with project partners
Application Details
Interested candidates are requested to fill-out the shared application form and submit their updated CV and covering letter via email to communications@starshieldsolution.com with the subject line: Application for Agriculture Research Development Officer (IRRI Project Deployment).
Only shortlisted candidates who complete the required documentation will be considered for subsequent stages of selection.
Selection will be done on a first-come-first-served basis. Applications received up to Thursday each week will be reviewed, and interviews will be conducted in the following week. As soon as we shall finish all recruitment, we will take the advertisement off.