The Alliance Bioversity-CIAT seeks a short-term Agrifood Traceability Standards Expert to support its contributions to the Digital Integration of Agricultural Supply Chains Alliance (DIASCA) working group on traceability.

Objectives

The successful candidate would contribute their vast technical expertise to:

• Co-designing, with active DIASCA members, consensus frameworks and action planning to identify and implement key data and technology standards that will need to be leveraged or further developed to enable interoperable first-mile traceability of agricultural commodities, with special focus on cacao, coffee,
• Iterating with active DIASCA members, on one or more pilots or proofs of concept for putting standards into practice, to enable compliance with policies and regulations intended to foster trust, transparency, and traceability in agrifood supply chains.
• Integrating the efforts and outputs of the traceability working group with DIASCA working groups on deforestation monitoring and living income.

Background

Funded by the German government, the DIASCA brings together some 200 public, private, and non-profit actors seeking to foster the development of common open standards to support interoperability between traceability systems.  From a due diligence content perspective, DIASCA focuses on regulatory requirements regarding deforestation and living incomes and wages. DIASCA works to develop solutions and validate them through real-world reference projects, and to establish common best practice recommendations for overcoming the current challenges of data exchange between traceability applications by defining and applying global, open, and cross-sectoral standards.

Country where the services will be done

Global, with potential country case studies/engagements in Central America, Kenya, and Vietnam. The period of the consultancy is 8 months.

Requirements

The successful candidate would, among other duties as required: Convene and facilitate the traceability working group meetings

Manage development and implementation of a shared roadmap for advancing traceability standards in close collaboration with active DIASCA members in one or more country contexts, with a focus on at least one (ideally more than one) of the following commodities: Coffee, Cacao, Cattle, Soy, Timber, Palm, Rubber.

Task, track, and facilitate technical sub-groups as needed (Data semantics and management, country cases) to support implementation of the roadmap.

Education, experience, and skills

• Master’s level degree in a relevant discipline (business administration, public policy, economics, sociology).
• Ten years’ experience guiding complex projects in the agrifood traceability space.
• Experience conducting or contributing to agrifood systems research with a particular focus on agrifood traceability, trust, or transparency.

Benefits

This is an international search and will be managed through a consultant agreement. The Alliance Bioversity-CIAT offers a multicultural, collegial research environment with honoraria according to the consultant’s experience. We are an equal opportunity employer, and strive for gender, diversity, and inclusion in our staff, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, marital status, or any other characteristic.

Applications

All applicants’ correspondence should be addressed to [email protected] and should indicate:

Closing date for applications: November 14^th,2023

We invite you to learn more about us at:

Carreras | Alliance Bioversity International – CIAT (alliancebioversityciat.org)