Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Agriculture Coordinator

🎯 Role Definition

The Agriculture Coordinator is responsible for planning, implementing and supervising agricultural programs and field-level activities that improve crop productivity, strengthen value chains, and enhance farmer livelihoods. This role combines technical agronomy expertise with project management, monitoring & evaluation, stakeholder engagement, and operational oversight to deliver high-quality, results-driven interventions across farms, communities, and partner networks.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Field Officer / Agricultural Extension Officer with hands-on farmer engagement experience
Agronomist or Crop Technician transitioning to program-level coordination
Project Assistant or Monitoring & Evaluation Assistant from agriculture projects

Advancement To:

Senior Agriculture Coordinator / Program Manager (Agriculture)
Project Manager or Regional Program Lead (Food Security / Rural Development)
Value Chain Manager, Agribusiness Development Manager, or Technical Advisor

Lateral Moves:

Monitoring & Evaluation Officer (Agriculture)
Value Chain Specialist or Market Linkages Coordinator

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Develop, implement and manage seasonal workplans and activity schedules for crop production, field demonstrations, and farmer training programs to meet project objectives and donor deliverables while ensuring alignment with local agronomic calendars and climate patterns.
Lead technical extension services by delivering practical agronomy advice on crop selection, soil fertility management, integrated pest and disease management (IPM), post-harvest handling, and irrigation practices to smallholder farmers and farmer groups.
Design, facilitate and evaluate farmer field schools (FFS), demonstration plots, participatory trials, and agronomic experiments to test improved varieties, technologies and climate-smart practices, and translate results into scalable recommendations.
Coordinate procurement, distribution and quality control of agricultural inputs (seeds, fertilizers, agrochemicals, tools) and manage seed systems and supplier relationships to ensure timely delivery and compliance with safety and quality standards.
Oversee field teams (extension workers, lead farmers, enumerators), provide technical mentorship, conduct on-site coaching and performance reviews to maintain high-quality service delivery and adherence to project methodologies.
Develop and lead training sessions, curricula and capacity building workshops for farmers, cooperatives and community-based organizations on topics including good agricultural practices (GAP), gender-sensitive extension, record keeping, and business skills.
Manage project budgets for field operations, prepare cost estimates for agricultural activities, track expenditure against plans, and work with finance teams to ensure accurate reporting and compliance with donor financial rules.
Design and implement monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) frameworks, define indicators, collect baseline and follow-up data, and use data for adaptive management to measure impact on crop yields, income and food security.
Prepare timely technical and narrative reports, donor reports and success stories that synthesize field results, lessons learned and recommended scaling strategies for program stakeholders and funders.
Facilitate market linkages and value chain development by conducting market assessments, identifying aggregation points, coordinating with buyers, and advising producer groups on grading, packaging and bulk sales strategies.
Ensure compliance with national and local regulations concerning pesticide use, environmental safeguards, health and safety protocols, and any certification requirements (e.g., GAP, organic, fair-trade) relevant to project activities.
Lead risk assessments and develop mitigation plans for threats to crop production (pests, diseases, weather shocks), including early warning surveillance, integrated management plans and contingency input stocks.
Coordinate multi-stakeholder engagement with government extension services, research institutions, private sector partners, NGOs and community leaders to leverage expertise, co-fund activities and ensure sustainability of interventions.
Supervise mobile and digital data collection processes (ODK, KoboToolbox, SurveyCTO) and maintain field data quality through regular spot checks, data cleaning protocols and capacity building for enumerators.
Organize and manage logistics for field operations including transportation of inputs, equipment maintenance, storage and distribution points, ensuring cold chain or dry storage requirements are met where applicable.
Support design and implementation of climate-smart agriculture interventions, including conservation agriculture, water harvesting, drought-tolerant varieties, and agroforestry, to increase resilience of smallholder systems.
Drive adoption of post-harvest loss reduction techniques and business development services, coordinating with extension and agribusiness partners to improve storage, processing and value addition at community level.
Manage beneficiary targeting, registration, and coordination for field activities, ensuring transparency, equity and adherence to project beneficiary selection criteria and inclusion of women, youth and marginalized groups.
Coordinate baseline, midline and endline surveys, support household and plot-level sampling strategies, and assist MEL teams to analyze agronomic and socioeconomic data for program reporting and learning.
Develop and maintain field-level SOPs, technical guidelines and job aids for extension staff that standardize agronomic recommendations, input use, safety procedures and quality assurance systems.
Act as the primary point of contact for agricultural technical queries, troubleshooting complex field problems and escalating technical challenges to senior agronomists or research partners as needed.
Support business case development and cost-benefit analyses for introducing new crop varieties, mechanization options or post-harvest technologies, providing technical input to proposals and concept notes.
Monitor and document gender, social inclusion and safeguarding components within agricultural interventions, ensuring that training, access to inputs and benefits are equitably distributed and that potential protection risks are mitigated.

Secondary Functions

Support proposal development and donor engagement by contributing technical annexes, workplans, budgets and agronomic evidence to funding applications.
Assist procurement and supply chain teams with technical specifications for inputs, equipment and contractor scopes of work, and participate in supplier vetting to ensure quality compliance.
Maintain and update an agricultural resource library (SOPs, technical notes, training materials) and adapt content to local languages and literacy levels.
Represent the organization at local agricultural coordination forums, government working groups and market linkages platforms to promote project activities and identify collaboration opportunities.
Coordinate with IT and MEL colleagues to pilot and scale digital tools for farmer advisory services (SMS, IVR, smartphone apps) and remote agronomy support.
Support the documentation and dissemination of success stories, farmer testimonials and visual case studies for internal learning and external communications.
Ensure field safety and emergency response readiness by maintaining first-aid kits, safety briefings for field teams, and contingency plans during extreme weather or security incidents.
Provide ad-hoc technical support to value chain actors including processors, aggregators and input retailers to strengthen backward and forward linkages.
Contribute to donor audits and compliance reviews by preparing technical documentation, data backups and site visit itineraries.
Participate in cross-functional planning for multi-sectoral interventions (nutrition-sensitive agriculture, WASH-AGRI linkages, social protection) and integrate agricultural components accordingly.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Agronomy expertise: crop physiology, seed selection, soil fertility management and nutrient budgeting for major staples and horticultural crops.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM): scouting, threshold-based interventions, safe pesticide use and biological control practices.
Soil and water management: soil testing interpretation, fertilizer recommendations, irrigation scheduling, and water harvesting techniques.
Post-harvest handling and storage: best-practice protocols to minimize losses, storage design, drying and basic processing methods.
Value chain analysis and market systems: market assessments, buyer engagement, aggregation strategies and price/quality grading fundamentals.
Monitoring & Evaluation (MEL): indicator design, baseline/midline/endline survey support, results frameworks, and impact measurement approaches.
Budgeting and financial tracking: field-level budget preparation, cost monitoring, and working knowledge of donor financial rules.
Digital data tools: experience with KoboToolbox, ODK, SurveyCTO, or similar mobile data collection platforms and familiarity with basic data cleaning in Excel.
GIS/GPS basics and mapping: farm mapping, plot-level GPS coordinates collection, and use of maps for planning and monitoring.
Procurement and supply chain management for agricultural inputs: specifications development, vendor management, and quality assurance.
Agricultural extension methods and adult learning facilitation: FFS, participatory learning, demonstration plot management and training design.
Safety and compliance: pesticide safety procedures, PPE use, and environmental safeguards, including knowledge of GAP or other certification standards.
Proposal and report writing: technical writing for donor proposals, technical reports and agronomic guidance notes.

Soft Skills

Excellent written and verbal communication tailored to technical and non-technical audiences, including farmers, government officers and donors.
Strong stakeholder engagement and partnership-building skills with government, private sector and community actors.
Leadership and team management: ability to coach field staff, coordinate cross-functional teams and manage performance under tight timelines.
Analytical thinking and problem-solving: troubleshoot agronomic issues, interpret field data and propose practical, evidence-based solutions.
Training facilitation and mentoring: comfortable delivering adult learning sessions and building the capacity of extension workers and farmer leaders.
Cultural sensitivity and community mobilization skills to engage diverse beneficiary groups and ensure inclusive participation.
Time management and organizational skills to plan field campaigns, manage logistics and meet reporting deadlines.
Adaptability and resilience to work in rural and sometimes challenging field environments.
Attention to detail and quality orientation in field monitoring, data collection and reporting.
Negotiation and conflict resolution skills when coordinating with suppliers, farmer groups and market actors.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture, Agronomy, Horticulture, Agricultural Economics, Natural Resources Management, or related field.

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree in Agronomy, Crop Science, Rural Development, Agricultural Extension, or similar.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Agronomy / Crop Science
Agricultural Extension & Education
Horticulture / Plant Protection
Agricultural Economics / Agribusiness
Natural Resources or Environmental Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7 years of progressively responsible experience in agricultural programming, extension services, or agronomy roles supporting smallholder farmers.

Preferred: 5+ years of experience coordinating agricultural projects or programs, experience managing budgets and donor reporting (e.g., USAID, EU, GIZ), demonstrated track record in training design, M&E and building market linkages. Experience working in the country or region of operation and fluency in local languages is highly desirable.