Based in Montpellier, France, and under the supervision of the Principal Scientist and Lever Director, Digital Inclusion, the Associate Fellow will be responsible for the 1000FARMS project, thus ensuring that planning, coordination and communication processes take place so that activities start on time, have the necessary resources and make efficient use of them, activities are timely reported, collaboration occurs smoothly, and that any emerging issues are detected without delay and can be addressed.

Background

1000FARMS is a 4-year project that addresses a key limitation of CGIAR-led breeding networks and national programs: insufficient on-farm variety performance data. These data are needed to effectively respond to climate change, farmer variety preferences and dynamically evolving market conditions. The 1000FARMS project will address this knowledge gap of the CGIAR-led breeding networks by establishing an efficient holistic platform consisting of digital tools, standardized methodologies, training resources and a community of practice to enable them to rapidly transform and scale up their late-stage on-farm testing programs. A unique feature of 1000FARMS is ‘ClimMob’, an integrated public software package that combines a trial design, in-season trial management, data collection and reporting functions, and can connect with other data sources (https://climmob.net).

This will enable the scaled evaluation of varieties in target environments where the effects of climate change are felt directly through on-farm testing, complementing insights from testing in controlled environments. For the first time, sufficient volumes of georeferenced on-farm trial data will be made available that will be connected to climate and other environmental data to analyze varietal climate adaptation in space and time.

Substantial volumes of gender and socio-economic data can be systematically linked to varietal preferences, permitting a data-driven empirical evaluation of breeding efforts in terms of gender and socio-economic targets and the generation of solid insights that can provide feedback to breeding programs to improve gender and socio-economic targeting. The 1000FARMS project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, and involves partnerships with CIMMYT, IITA, Wageningen University and INN University (Norway).

Responsibilities

• Coordinate the yearly planning of the 1000FARMS project
  
• Maintain an overview of project delivery status, use of staff time and project funds to facilitate project management
  
• Function as the focal point for issues related to the project management software: interactions with the software provider, maintenance, updates, troubleshooting and users’ instruction
  
• Provide monthly updates to the project team and partners about their tasks and responsibilities, progress, partner agreements, resource availability, reporting requirements, and other information relevant to the project
  
• Organize online and physical meetings such as: regular meetings of the project teams; steering committee; meetings to facilitate interactions with external stakeholders; an annual project meeting; and other meetings according to the needs of the project
  
• Lead quarterly reporting: compile, write and edit reports
  
• Compile inputs to the annual report
  
• Lead the production of a quarterly digital newsletter with inputs from the project team and partners
• Provide planning inputs to additional project proposals to complement the 1000FARMS project
• Perform other tasks as needed and assigned