Researcher Ph.D. Full Time

Position: Researcher Ph.D.

Contract Duration: 24 Months

Location: Varanasi, UP, with occasional travel to project sites and other locations

Project Summary:

The project “AgriPath – Empowering smallholder farmers’ transition to sustainable agriculture through effective and efficient digital pathways” aims to bring sustainable agriculture to scale. By providing farmers and extension services with tailored digital solutions focused on sustainable agricultural practices, female and male smallholders are supported in increasing their agricultural productivity, income, and climate resilience. AgriPath will examine intra-household decision-making processes, including processes that go beyond established social norms (gender roles) to embrace more democratic access to information and knowledge (e.g., including youth, not just household heads). It will provide evidence on sustainable pathways for use of digital advisory services at scale and enhance the uptake of sustainable practices.

India is an agrarian country and agriculture with its allied sector is the largest source of livelihood. Agriculture extension service plays a major role in strengthening the agricultural system by empowering farmers in terms of better livelihood. Smallholder farmers lacking resources and time also often have limited access to current and subsistence information. The existing traditional agriculture extension services may not effectively reach out to every smallholder farmer. Digital technologies could enhance the effectiveness of extension by reducing outreach costs and helping to better tailor the information to farmers’ individual needs and conditions.

This Ph.D. project is expected to investigate digital advisory services (DAS) i.e., Farm Better mobile app that improves knowledge diffusion, adoption of technologies, and livelihoods of rural small and marginal farmers using Randomized Controlled Trials in Uttar Pradesh, India. Grameen Foundation India has been promoting an agency-based model to DAS by selecting some community members to be agents. This Ph.D. project will test this agent-based model, the self-service model (after training the farmers in using the app), and a hybrid model where the app’s main features are accessed by the agent while some features are by the farmers themselves. The impact on scalability, household welfare, ease of diffusion, and cost-effectiveness of all three will be compared. Each of these approaches has different implications for the sustainability, cost, and structure of DAS.

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

We are looking for a Ph.D. candidate already enrolled for the Ph.D. who has finished the Ph.D. coursework with the following qualifications and requirements.

1. An MSc degree completed in social science /Agricultural social sciences like Agriculture economics or Agricultural extension sciences discipline with an excellent academic record.
2. Strong knowledge and skills regarding research design, data collection, analysis, and presentation.
3. Demonstrated knowledge of and experience with qualitative and quantitative data collection methods and analysis.
4. Knowledge of the agriculture domain of India in general and Uttar Pradesh in specific.
5. Excellent oral and written communication skills in English/ Hindi/local dialect.
6. Good skills in research paper writing and presentation.
7. Willingness to travel and work in rural villages in India
8. Successful candidate should be a Ph.D. student already enrolled for the PhD, has completed or will have completed the Ph.D. coursework by April 2023

Essential Job Functions (Deliverable with specific timeline):

Two main research activities are planned during the project period

• Support for Listing of households in the project villages
• Support for onboarding of extension agents and Farmers
• Support for Hiring of enumerators for the research and onboarding
• Training of Farmers and Extension Agents

1.1 One baseline research in the project area during Feb -April 2023 and associated activities as mentioned below

• Support the project research activities in collaboration with the consortium partners
• Support in designing research tools
• Data collection
• Data quality management
• Data analysis and
• Finalising research findings with research partners

1.2 One end-line research activity planned during the end of Jan – Sep 2024 and associated activities

• Support the project research activities in collaboration with the consortium partners
• Support in designing research tools
• Data collection
• Data quality management
• Data analysis and
• Finalising research findings with research partners
• Two Mobile surveys on the effectiveness of the Farm Better App designed in the project

Activities related to mobile survey and analysis of findings during July to September 23 and October to Dec 24

Reporting and relationships: The student will be jointly supervised by the respective guide, advisory committee members from the university, and the AgriPath project consortium researchers.

How to apply:

Interested candidates fulfilling above requirement may apply within 7 days by sending their updated resumes and letter of motivation to sshubhangi@grameenfoundation.in mentioning “Researcher” in the subject line and confirming the current and expected compensation and earliest joining date.

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Tagged as: research