TERMS OF REFERENCE

FARMER GLOBALG.A.P. CONSULTANT
VIETNAM’S IFC FOOD SAFETY PROJECT

Position:            Individual Short-Term Consultant
Location:            Ham Thuan Nam District, Binh Thuan Province, Vietnam
Contract Term:        Up to 65 days

A.    PROJECT BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

About IFC

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets. Working with more than 2,000 businesses worldwide, we use our capital, expertise, and influence to create markets and opportunities in the toughest areas of the world. In FY18, we delivered more than $23 billion in long-term financing for developing countries, leveraging the power of the private sector to help end poverty and boost shared prosperity. For more information, visit www.ifc.org.

About IFC Food Safety Advisory

IFC has made agribusiness a priority because of its potential for broad development impact and especially strong role in poverty reduction. We combine investments and advisory services to help the sector address higher demand and escalating food prices in an environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive way.

IFC invests across the agribusiness supply chain—from farm to retail—to help boost production, increase liquidity, improve logistics and distribution, and expand access to credit for small farmers.

IFC Advisory Services (AS) supports companies that promote good agricultural practices that benefit small-scale farmers, and value chain solutions involving small and medium size enterprises.  

The Global Food Safety Platform is one of four platforms that have been created by Manufacturing Agribusiness and Services Advisory to support clients along strategic themes. The other platforms include Animal Protein, Irrigation, and Smallholder Supply Chains. Within the scope of this Platform, IFC will be working with agribusiness and retail clients (“the Client-Companies”) in all food industry sectors on efforts to increase their competitiveness. Specifically, IFC’s Vietnam Food Safety Project aims to facilitate the upgrading of food safety management systems of companies in the region in keeping with changing global requirements that will lead to improvement of their performance and efficiency and ultimately to sales increase, costs and risk profile reduction.

The Vietnam Food Safety project will undertake Global Food Safety Platform activities in Vietnam, from client engagements to training for local consultants and raising awareness on food safety to the private sector.

B.    THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS ASSIGNMENT

IFC is supporting support improvement of a client’s food safety and quality implementation.  The client is one of Vietnam’s leading fruit and vegetable growers, processors and exporters, and it sources from across the Mekong region.  It manages its own plantations and operates two fruit processing factories and a cold chain system in Vietnam and works directly or through suppliers with thousands of farmers and suppliers in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.  The client plans to improve practices including developing and meeting appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) related to losses and quality, and to obtain and meet internationally recognized certifications as applicable, and up to 1,000 fruit farmers in Vietnam, and for its cold chain system.  Over the course of 18 months beginning in July 2019, IFC will field a number of expert consultants to support the client.
For this particular assignment, IFC is seeking to hire a short-term consultant for 65 days from 7/2020 to 9/2020 to provide GLOBALG.A.P. awareness training courses and diagnostic assessments to dragon fruit farmers/producers who are potentially included in the client’s dragon fruit supply chain in the future in Ham Thuan Nam District, Binh Thuan Province, Vietnam.

C.    SCOPE OF WORK

The scope of this assignment is to provide GLOBALG.A.P. IFA Fruit & Vegetables version 5.2 training, coaching and other consultancy services for up to 400 dragon fruit farmers/producers of a Client-Company in Binh Thuan province, Vietnam from July 2020 to September 2020 including:

• Form the list of 400 dragon fruit producers and group them into 20 groups; and each group has 20 producers and their spouses (totally 40 persons) based on their suitable geographical locations (totally, 3 days). The list should include farmer’s name and/or his/her spouse who owns the land.
• Randomly select 20 dragon fruit producers/farmers in these 20 groups, at least 1 producer for each group, to conduct diagnostic/gap assessments for them by using GLOBALG.A.P. IFA Fruit & Vegetable Version 5.2 Checklist, (totally 10 days).
• Report assessment results and make a training/coaching schedule for these 20 groups (2 days).
• Provide a two-day training/coaching for each group of 40 participants (totally 40 days for 20 groups) based available training packages which will be provided. For each training course, farmers and his/her spouse will be invited, and the training contents include:
  
  • Overall introductions to GLOBALG.A.P. and  GLOBALG.A.P. IFA Fruit & Vegetables version 5.2.
  • The procedures of growing, caring and harvesting dragon fruit farms as per the requirements of GLOBALG.A.P. IFA Fruit & Vegetables version 5.2. They consist of growing techniques, fertilizer and pesticide application techniques, integrated pest management, weed, water, soil and disease management.
  • A note that before each class, a short questionnaire will be delivered to each producer to collect some their basic baseline data and the consultant will make sure that all participants understand the questions and answer correctly, then collect them.
• Provide the final assessments to the 20 producers/farmers who have been assessed in diagnostics/baseline by using GLOBALG.A.P. IFA Fruit & Vegetable Version 5.2 Checklist (10 days).

D.    DELIVERABLES/SPECIFIC OUTPUTS EXPECTED FROM THE CONSULTANT

Deliverables include

• gap analysis reports, filled checklists, and action plans/training, follow-up and final assessment schedules.
• training materials for farmers.
• risk assessment reports, progress reports, filled questionnaires and a list of workers trained.

Acceptance of Deliverables:

• All documents, training materials shall be developed by the Consultants and provided to IFC in electronic version.  
• Payment will be made based on stated deliverables. The Consultant shall submit payment requests upon completion of the deliverables.  

LOCATION

The assignment will involve in dragon fruit plantations in Ham Thuan Nam District, Binh Thuan Province.

QUALIFICATIONS AND SKILLS

Interested candidates are expected to have

• Minimum bachelor or engineering degree in agriculture, agribusiness, food safety or rele-vant majors.
• At least having 10 years of experience working in and for agribusiness, agriculture and international food safety management standards consulting (particularly for GLOB-ALG.A.P.; VietGAP, organic standards…).
• Deeply understanding GLOBALG.A.P., HACCP, dragon fruit crop production and plant protection products…and well understanding dragon fruit sector and local contexts.
• Participating in GLOBALG.A.P. capacity building and dragon fruit technical training courses.
• Living/Based in the training location is a must.
• Having a good local network with dragon fruit farmers and local authorities to able to in-vite and form farmers for training courses.
• Having very good communication and consulting skills, a diligent and systematic ap-proach to the works and obtaining a GLOBALG.A.P. farm assurer license as an asset.
• Native Vietnamese and fluent in English, and proficient writing skills.
• Ability to keep the good relationship and smooth communication with the client, and re-sponsive

The Consultant should provide a CV in the table format clearly indicating your background, training courses, experiences in the relevant fields/sector, list of your producer clients including name, address, works done/standards consulted, contacts (contact persons, emails and cellphone numbers).

REPORTING  

The consultant will report to Mr. Pham Duc Uy ([email protected]). Any contacts or work ar-rangements with the producer within this assignment must be informed to IFC in advance.

PROPOSAL AND COST

The applicant submits a proposal to state how and when she/he will proceed the works and proposed cost for the works by June 15, 2019.

The consultant will be expected to start the works from July 2020 to September 2020.

CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT

All data and information received from IFC for the purpose of this assignment are to be treated confidentially and are only to be used in connection with the execution of these Terms of Ref-erence. All intellectual property rights arising from the execution of these Terms of Reference are assigned to IFC.

The contents of written materials obtained and used in this assignment may not be disclosed to any third parties without the expressed advance written authorization of the IFC.  

The consultant must guarantee that:

• Never transfer or give any things obtained from this assignment including from the pro-ducer/client and from IFC to anyone and to any third-party organizations.
• Fully take legal responsibilities and commitments including any damage compensations caused by the violations of the consultant to the confidentiality and intellectual property rights of this assignment.

OWNERSHIP OF MATERIALS

Any deliverables under this assignment in any form will be the property of the including intellec-tual property developed under this assignment. All the Project outputs including reports and other creative work called for by these Terms of Reference in written, graphic, audio, visual, electronic or other forms shall acknowledge the support of IFC.

Proposals should be submitted to [email protected] before the closing date of June 5, 2020.

Organization: IFC
Location: Binh Thuan
Application deadline: 2020-06-05
Send application to: [email protected]