Agribusiness Specialist Volunteers support Ugandan households in achieving economic security and improved food and nutrition security. Volunteers work with community members to build the capacity of women, youth, and farmers to generate income through agricultural activities, improve money management practices, develop their entrepreneurial potential, and adopt more nutritious diets. Agribusiness Specialists may also work with Small and Medium Business Enterprises and Farmers’ Cooperative to support agribusiness and farm management, market linkages, value addition and nutrition support. Volunteers work in rural and semi-urban communities that have a high need for food security and economic development opportunities, many of which are not reached by other organizations. Volunteers also work with schools, health centers and other stakeholders to promote household nutrition.

Activities may include but are not limited to:

• Training farmers, women and youth on farm management practices and improved crop production to increase income (Agriculture as a Business).
• Training community groups on financial literacy which includes budgeting, bookkeeping, saving and financial goal setting.
• Training community groups, farmers cooperatives and owners of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) on business development, business planning and management, marketing, value addition, pricing and branding.
• Support the formation and strengthening of village savings and loan associations (VSLAs).
• Advise farmers on post-harvest handling and value addition to reduce waste and increase profitability of agriculture-based products.
• Promote home gardening and nutrition-sensitive agriculture practices among households.
• Promote nutrition-sensitive food processing and preservation techniques that enhance the shelf life, nutritional value, and safety of perishable foods.
• Encourage the production and consumption of nutritious food.
• Create awareness and train community members on the effects of environmental change and mitigation measures to create environmental resilient and food secure communities.

Volunteers work with an array of groups and host organizations, including farmers, women and youth groups, and agricultural cooperatives as well as non-governmental, community-based, and faith-based organizations. Each host organization and community are unique in their needs, opportunities, and challenges.

Volunteers use flexibility, patience, humility, and good humor to successfully serve their communities. Volunteers do not serve in communities to “fix” things. Rather, you will be most successful when you work with your community and host organization to collaboratively and creatively find ways to address issues using local resources.

Peace Corps Uganda promotes gender awareness and girls’ education and empowerment. Volunteers receive training on gender challenges and can implement gender-related activities that are contextually appropriate. During service, Volunteers look for ways to work with community members to promote gender-equitable norms and increase girls’ sense of agency. As part of their work, Volunteers will also report on these efforts and their impact. Volunteers invited to this project are expected to work as professionals and will be periodically evaluated on their work performance.

Environmental adaptation and resilience

As an Agriculture Volunteer, you will be trained on best practices for smallholder agriculture to improve household food security and nutrition and adapt to a changing and uncertain environmental context. As the impacts of environmental degradation and unsustainable natural resource management practices become more evident, the social, economic, and environmental contexts that smallholder farmers operate within will continue to change. This will add to the challenges of smallholder farming, particularly for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.
As an Agriculture Volunteer, you will be trained to support food security and livelihood improvement while increasing community resilience and adaptation to global change through your activities. These activities will:
• Promote the adoption of improved, appropriate, and adaptive agricultural practices and technologies that increase productivity, including practices that:
o improve soil health and promote circularity of on-farm organic waste
o reflect indigenous knowledge of nature-based solutions and
o preserve and enhance forests, biodiversity, and ecosystem services.
• Build and strengthen household resilience by integrating and diversifying existing and new agriculture-related income-generating opportunities
• Improve household nutrition, particularly that of the most vulnerable household members

Required skills

Competitive candidates will have one or more of the following criteria:

• Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture Economics or a degree combining agriculture and management, including agribusiness, agricultural management, farm management.
• At least 3 years of experience in farm management and/or agribusiness.
• Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Science degree in any business or economics discipline with 1 year experience in farming or agribusiness.

Desired skills

Competitive candidates will have one or more of the following relevant qualifications:

• Small-scale farming and experience with agricultural value addition and post-harvest handling.
• Experience in crop production, business development, business management, marketing, costing, and pricing, small agriculture startup or income generating activities.
• Experience in nutrition education sensitization.
• Experience in agriculture and farm work focusing on vegetable gardening,
• Experience talking to groups of people about agricultural practices and technologies
• Experience mobilizing people for group meetings
• Experience delivering training on agricultural topics
• Experience with small scale field experiments
• Knowledge of basic field crop, tree crop or vegetable production practices and technologies
• Experience in project planning