Job Detail

Job Description

1. Project background:

AVSI is an international non-profit organization founded and headquartered in Italy with long-term development and emergency relief projects in 33 countries around the world. AVSI's presence and commitment in Iraq date back to 1991 with emergency health activities and later educational and livelihood projects. Nowadays, AVSI is implementing projects in Ninewa, Erbil and Duhok Governorates.

In Bashiqa, Ninewa, AVSI started to implement a livelihood project for the support of vulnerable agricultural farmers wanting to restart or strengthen their business activity. The project’s first phase will be to provide the selected farmers with technical training that can be beneficial for them to learn and strengthen their knowledge of agricultural techniques, good practices, and irrigation systems. The training will be essential for the farmers to be able to then receive the in-kind support provided by the project. The project's second phase will focus on providing in-kind support (small irrigation system and/or agricultural inputs).

1. Objectives of the Assignment

The objective of this activity is to implement technical trainings for 60 beneficiaries in the Sinuni sub-district, on the following topics:

• Efficient irrigation methods, the volumes of water to be distributed according to crop needs, and the various techniques to optimize water use efficiency will be considered: use of drop-by-drop and sprinkler irrigation systems; fixing of potential problems in the system; set up of the irrigation system.
• Good Agricultural Practices in horticulture to improve productivity by working on agronomic planting and husbandry techniques that reduce disease exposure and increase nutrient uptake efficiency.
• Integrated agriculture in horticulture: The basic principles of integrated farming techniques will then be provided in order to calibrate the use of agrochemicals to the specific needs of plants based on the level of infestation and damage in the field.

Smart Agriculture Techniques will be developed in each of the 3 subjects: changes in cultural practices, opting for conservative agriculture that aims to preserve the fertility of the cultivated soil; changes in water management and irrigation systems to optimize water use; support of new technologies to improve predictive models of weather variations and to refine decision support systems; solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production: burying fertilizers, reducing emissions from manure storage using 'smart' containers or composting; reducing synthetic fertilizers through the use of precision farming techniques.

The project foresees the organization of 8 training days per beneficiary: 36 hours of training (each training includes theoretical and practical parts for 12hrs each).  The theoretical part will be integrated with the practical part on the beneficiaries’ farms.

Skills Required

• Agriculture
• efficient
• irrigation
• farms
• Horticulture