Accepting applications for four consultancies

Deadline is January 24

World Coffee Research is seeking consultants for four projects related to the MOCCA program, covering Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Peru. Submissions are due January 24.

The Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and TechnoServe (TNS) signed a cooperation agreement to implement the Maximization of Opportunities in Coffee and Cacao Program in the Americas (MOCCA), covering Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Peru and Ecuador. As is the case for other Food for Progress Programs (FFP), MOCCA will aim to help farmers increase productivity and expand trade, and will also strive to help farmers expand their capacity to adopt rehabilitation and renovation (R&R) with the use of best practices.

Under MOCCA, World Coffee Research (WCR) will lead activities to improve and maintain coffee breeding and agronomic research in collaboration with PROMECAFE and national research institutions (or other organizations that conduct or have the capacity to carry our research), as well as increase capacities in existing or new large nurseries and support the development of training materials for small nurseries.

WCR will support local and regional organizations, including national research organizations and local research institutes, to augment their research, while strengthening the capacity of the PROMECAFE platform to collaborate with country research organizations to prioritize research, share findings, and develop a regional research funding pipeline that is functional and sustainable, allowing target countries to conduct research benefiting their coffee market systems during the life of the project and beyond.

Consultant #1: Research Decisions

The purpose of this consultancy is to support local and regional organizations, including national research organizations and local research institutes, to augment their research, while strengthening the capacity of the PROMECAFE platform to collaborate with country research organizations to prioritize research, share findings, and develop a regional research funding pipeline that is functional and sustainable, allowing target countries to conduct research benefiting their coffee market systems during the life of the project and beyond.

For full terms of reference, please read this document

Consultant #2: Breeding Hub Preparations

The purpose of this consultancy is to establish a regional breeding hub in one of MOCCA´s target countries. It will use the latest genetic tools, such marker assisted breeding, and hybrid technologies to accelerate propagation of new promising varieties through building the capacity of NCIs through PROMECAFE to develop improved varieties tailored to the needs of their countries

Thereby the objetive of this consultancy is to develop a guidelines for the creation of a regional breeding hub, where NCI scientists, other actors from the countries can jointly develop and assess new coffee varieties using modern breeding methods.

For full terms of reference, please read this document.

Consultant #3: Develop a guide for nurseries

The purpose of this consultancy is to develop a Guide to manage profitable business of coffee seeds and nurseries use as the training material for people who work in Coffee and in Coffee Nursery.

The "Guide to manage profitable business of coffee seeds and nurseries" will closely follow the two Guides that WCR already launch: (1) Good practices coffee seed production; (2) Good practices for coffee nurseries.

The Guide will contain lessons on how to manage business administration, marketing guidelines, accountants, profitability tests and other useful tools for good business administration.

The consultant will determine the appropriate number of modules or lessons so that all the material is fully introduced and decomposed into the appropriate size for absorption. The lessons will be based on how to do profitable business from coffee seeds and nurseries production in a professional way; and, through practical application, people can acquire specific skills by "learning by doing."

The Guide will be drafted in an appropriate manner for the intended audience of trainer technicians and larger-scale producers or their technicians, including examples of hypothetical financial evaluation scenarios, registration templates, calculation issues and solved situations on how build business capabilities, brands development and new marketing methods, among others. In the same way, the Guide have to be accompanied by instructions to the trainers, as required and will be written in English and Spanish; and should be written in a way where modifications can easily be made to adjust to local contexts.

For full terms of reference, please read this document.

Consultant #4: PROMECAFE Assessment

The purpose of this consultancy is to develop Objectives and Work Plans that will allow Regional Platforms and member countries, increase research, disseminate research results more effectively and sustain research funding.

Also WCR will establish a ‘regional PROMECAFE-led R&D platform’ to develop a collaborative applied research program where MOCCA will extend collaborative research grants as a 1:1 match to each NCI that will support them to generate a Technology Pipeline.

These will be annual grants, given out in years 2, 3 and 4 of the projects. We will create 2 thematic areas for consideration – genetics/breeding and productivity. The evaluation of the proposal will be done by committee comprised of WCR staff, and representatives of PROMECAFE, SCC and GCP by developing workshops and consultations.

For full terms of reference, please read this document.