Education + Experience

Agronomy

• Monitor, advise and implement strategies to adopt agricultural best practice in both McP and third-party out grower operations, including but not limited to pest and disease detection, control and mitigation; planning and production; variety selection and optimization; and soil health, crop nutrition, ripening and herbicide programs and recommendations.
• Provide scientific agronomic support and benchmarking to both McP and out grower divisions in the development of annual crop estimates, as well as plough out and replant programs.
• Formulate plant protection and nutrition programmes and ensures adherence to good agronomic practices by the McP operations; and implements strategies to enhance the productivity of the outgrower operations.
• Develop and manage agricultural information systems for use in the setting up of crop production targets and resource utilization efficiency parameters.
• Set information parameters that allow estates to benchmark with other operations and best practice.
• Set and compile budgets and recommend production parameters for the Agriculture division to the Head of Agricultural Operations.

Water Management

• Lead, coordinate and manage the industry irrigation catchments (and related strategic stakeholder engagements and/or strategic business cases), including the optimization of reticulation, application, water demand and power supply through appropriate measurement, commercial contracting, control and benchmarking processes.
• Approve and monitor irrigation and drainage policies, as well as the cost-effectiveness thereof.

Land preparation & Infrastructure

• Approve annual land preparation activities in line with budgeted cropping program.
• Manage and monitor third-party service providers against efficiency, cost, quality and governance parameters. Determine the agricultural mechanization strategies and plans.
• Manage all land preparation, internal water civil infrastructure including roads through formulating and implementing machinery utilization programmes, sourcing, servicing and maintenance programmes.
• Determine on introduction of cost effective and high yielding irrigation systems and harvesting technologies.

Outgrowers

• Develop and implement horizontal and vertical growth initiatives geared towards the sustainable increase in third-party out grower production. This explicitly includes the staffing structure, service offering and implementation models of the department.
• Lead and develop a strong working relationship with third-party outgrowers and assume accountability for their operational performance.
• Sensitivity towards the socio-political environment, ensuring that the business unit recognizes and is responsive to this reality.

Projects

• Lead, design and manage development projects - ensuring they are competitively priced, within budget and quality standard, and follow appropriate governance and accountability protocols.
• Undertake post-implementation reviews to evaluate actual performance against project feasibilities.
• Source development-oriented finance for new projects.

• BSc degree in Agriculture/ Agricultural Engineering.
• MSc in Agricultural Engineering an added advantage.
• Minimum of ten years’ senior management and operational experience directly in commercial agriculture, agribusiness, agricultural projects and/or support.