Statistics and Area Frame Specialist

In the face of environmental complexity, FAO will provide assistance to the government of Islamic Republic of Iran, in setting up an improved agriculture monitoring system based on integral use of advanced geospatial technology to support the development of the techniques, policy and investment conditions to achieve sustainable agricultural development under climate change. Improved Agricultural monitoring is required to provide more timely, accurate and comprehensive in coverage than current systems and based on improved agricultural statistics. In addition, the improved agriculture monitoring system will support the development of an Agricultural Market System to enhance food market transparency and encourage coordination of policy action in response to country market uncertainty.
The primarily objective of the project is the establishment of a prototype demonstrator operational agriculture monitoring system, established in a limited number of priority provinces (3); that improves quality of agriculture information and reporting based on geospatial technology with the expected impact of adoption of the improved strategies for increasing and diversifying production potentials by the Government. It will also focus on the identification of state of the art methods and strategy for acreage and yield estimation based on the assessment of the existing monitoring methodology and optimized through the use of remote sensing. It will identify sustainable methods for field data collection methodologies and approaches to produce improved, harmonized and consolidated statistics, utilizing statistically sound, harmonized methodology that leverages data collected by provincial agriculture offices. In addition, the project will benefit from the availability of multi-temporal satellite images for testing and monitoring of a range of crops for the selected provinces.
Estimation through sampling in the field will be carried out to identify sites for crop cutting and crop area and yield estimation. The employment of multi-temporal high resolution satellite images will enable MAJ to collect near-real time crop field information and use it operationally for the monitoring. The post is located in FAO Representation Office in Tehran, The Islamic Republic of Iran.

Reporting Lines

Under the overall supervision of the FAO Representative and the technical supervision of Lead Technical Officer (LTO) and National Project Officer, the incumbent will perform the tasks described below.

Technical Focus

This assignment require a certain number of working hours per week, including working minimum two-full days per week from the project Office in Tehran and the reminder hours are worked remotely. The assignment also include periodic field visits to project pilot sites (for 2 to 3 days) each as required by the project under these terms of references.
The consultant will report on technical matters to the LTO, and administratively to the project’s NPD/NPC and FAO Iran.
The Consultant should submit monthly activity report to the project LTO for clearance no later than the 25th day of the month. The LTO will review and clear the report within 5 working day following submission. If the report is cleared by the project LTO, it is forwarded to the BH clearing the way for the payment for the days worked during the month

Tasks and responsibilities

Under the technical supervision of the LTO, and the overall guidance of the FAOIR and national counterpart of the project, the incumbent will assist primarily with following tasks.
• Work in close collaboration with the FAO technical team providing assistance on the implementation of technical activities related to agriculture statistics and area frame;
• Support the assessment of the current area frame methodology and identification of the most appropriate type of area frame;
• Support the development of an improved field data collection methodology/systems integrated with geospatial technologies to reduce sampling error;
• Support the development, based on the assessment, a strategy for improved approaches to crop area and yield estimation of the major crops recommending a cost-effective methodology at the national level;
• Support the estimation of the area and yield of the sampling sites and define statistically based yield procedures;
• Support the stratification for the area frame based on agriculture land cover, crop/non crop map and satellite imagery;
• Support the generation of cropland statistics based on the identified methodology to be scaled up to national level;
• Prepare training and workshops materials;
• Follow up findings and recommendations;
• Prepare a final report;
• Perform any other tasks as required.

CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

• A University degree in Agriculture, Statistics, Remote Sensing or the equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience;
• Minimum of 5 years’ experience in area frame and ground data collection for agriculture statistics,
• Proven communications skills and fluent in English language;
• Iranian Nationality only.

• Results Focus
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Building Effective Relationships
• Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement