Purpose of the Role

To coordinate Agronomic activities in Unilever Tea Tanzania – undertake trialing, support roll out and implementation of good agricultural practices and sustainable and regenerative agriculture initiatives

Key Responsibilities

Technical

• Undertake fertilizer calibration and harvesting experiments. Draft design and protocols, undertake trial sites identification and lay out agreed experiments to meet objectives.
• Coordinate the monitoring of crop nutritional status in all production fields and advise on remedial measures
• Evaluate new innovations in agricultural operations – planting, harvesting and general husbandry in line with company productivity improvements for the estates and the outgrowers
• Supervise collection, collation, and analysis of data from the field experiments
• Undertake preparation /drafting of agronomy trial reports
• Responsible for training of field research assistants and data clerks.
• Provide expert knowledge in Agronomy to ETT.
• Seek leadership agreement in adoption of novel cost-effective agricultural technologies
• Support the operations in the implementation of GAP at the divisional level through engagement with divisional managers and field visit.
• Collaborate with the company Tea breeders, the microbiologists, processing Technologists, and company engineers to develop and innovate growing and harvesting technologies.

Administrative

• Collate and present data for the R&D annual budget preparation
• Plan & supervise transport to experimental sites
• Provide technical assistance to estate managers
• Supervise data collection in line with the Unilever sustainable agriculture code of practice/ SA indicators
• Coordinate documentation relevant to agricultural/environmental certification schemes subscribed to by Unilever Tea Kenya.
• Maintain historical records and carry out biannual benchmarking with other competitor plantations.
• Provide data for updating of the GAP manual.
• Provide training to the estate managers on topical agronomic issues

Relationships

• Jointly provide agronomic/plantation management information to the Estate/divisional managers, Outgrower managers, Finance managers, and procurement managers for effective production and cost management.
• Engage with national research institutions in development of new tea growing technologies
• Support provision of quality specifications to procurement team for effective sourcing of farm inputs
• Evaluate and distil value from any research/plantation consultants.
• Liaise with legal for publication and protection of internally developed agronomic technologies.
• Work closely with R&D and field operations teams to understand challenges of green leaf production, interdependencies and potential solutions.

Scope

Undertakes projects within Unilever Tea plantation Tanzania, Mufindi and Njombe Outgrowers network.

Challenges

• Influencing ability to gain commitment of the operations team
• Maintain solid understanding of current agronomic knowledge and trends in agricultural business dynamics
• Handling varied and often conflicting requests from operations

Competencies

• Strong analytical power, statistical acumen, Organizational awareness, influencing ability, and working knowledge on business acumen.
• Good team player and adept at building strong cross-cultural/ cross-functional working relationships.

Unilever is an organisation committed to equity, inclusion and diversity to drive our business results and create a better future, every day, for our diverse employees, global consumers, partners, and communities. We believe a diverse workforce allows us to match our growth ambitions and drive inclusion across the business. At Unilever we are interested in every individual bringing their ‘Whole Self’ to work and this includes you! Thus if you require any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of your application so that we can support you through your recruitment journey.