Associate, Agriculture

Position summary:

The Associate, Agriculture will support the implementation of already defined strategic objectives of the Rainforest Alliance with respect to agricultural transformation, from conventional to sustainable to regenerative agriculture within the organization. The Associate, Agriculture will be part of the Sustainable and Resilience Agriculture sub-unit of the Forest and Agriculture unit, within the Global Programs department, and will provide support on agricultural related activities, projects and programs. Associate, Agriculture will provide technical advice for project and program design, contribute for standards and framework development, for his subject matter expertise areas.

Responsibilities:

• Provide support to a wide range of projects and programs on sustainable and resilient agricultural, specially those related agricultural transformation from conventional to sustainable to regenerative;
•  Support with regional project development, their implementation and developing technical capacity on the above-mentioned priority themes;
• Support in the development of M&E frameworks to facilitate the measurement of progress on broad agricultural topics.
• Provide general support and guidance to staff and external audiences by providing prompt, informative communications to general queries on agricultural topics including regenerative agriculture;
• Support the development of scorecards, data collection systems, data analysis, field questionnaires and all topics relating to implementation of agricultural transformation.
• Support in the development of tools, training and guidance material to be used for Training of Trainers, among other stakeholders; and
• Advice on internal and external communications and messaging on broad agricultural topics under the supervision of the agriculture lead, and together with Communications team, including webpage updates, blogs, press releases and social media outlets.

Qualifications: 

• First degree in Tropical Agronomy or Natural Resource Management;
• Minimum 3 years hands on experience in agriculture related work, preferably with experience in producing countries in the global south; Alternatively a recently graduated Masters on a related field of experience
• Knowledge of agroecology or regenerative agriculture would be considered a strong plus
• Knowledge of certification programs in the context of agriculture issues and sustainability practices, would be an asset;
• Excellent writing, editing and verbal communication skills;
• Fluency in verbal and written English required; Spanish, French or Portuguese are a plus;
• Excellent interpersonal skills with ability to interact culturally, linguistically, and diplomatically with diverse internal and external individuals;
• Initiative, self-motivated, resourceful, detail-oriented, dependability, strong attention to detail and ability to execute work independently and with initiative;
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Excel, Word and working knowledge on PowerPoint, and Outlook;
• Ability to travel approx. 10% per year, nationally and internationally