Sustainable Food & Agriculture Consultant

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Position Available: Sustainable Food and Agriculture Consultant
San Francisco Bay Area
(Embedded image moved to file: pic21343.gif) The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is now accepting applications for a Sustainable Food and Agriculture Consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area (full time equivalency). The consultant will work with NRDC staff to implement several projects seeking to advance more sustainable food and agricultural systems.

Applications will be accepted until July 6, 2009.

About NRDC The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a non-profit national environmental advocacy organization with more than 1.2 million members and online activists. We have offices in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Beijing. Our staff of over 300 includes attorneys, scientists, policy analysts and educators working to protect the environment and public health through advocacy and education.

Requested consulting services NRDC promotes food and farming systems that advance environmental, social and economic sustainability goals. Growing consumer and business interest in sustainable agriculture, combined with the emergence of agriculturally-derived biofuels and the development of state and federal climate change policy, creates an unprecedented opportunity to promote more sustainable food and farming systems. In this context, NRDC seeks consulting services for the following:

· Develop sustainability metrics to enable market-place reporting, comparison and continual improvement of sustainable performance in the food sector. NRDC is a founding participant of the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops, a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at developing business-to-business metrics for benchmarking sustainable performance in the fruit and vegetable supply chain (see www.stewardshipindex.org). The consultant will help NRDC contribute to this effort through the development and evaluation of specific metrics; providing outreach to experts and industry leaders; designing and coordinating pilot projects to evaluate possible metrics in actual supply chains; and evaluating opportunities to promote Stewardship Index metrics throughout this sector.

· Expand NRDC's capacity to contribute to sustainable standard-setting processes currently underway for the production of food and fiber. The consultant may help NRDC identify effective performance standards, represent NRDC in specific standard-setting processes, and seek alignment across different initiatives.

· Work with NRDC staff to develop new initiatives to promote sustainable food and fiber production while advancing climate stewardship goals.

Qualifications Requested qualifications include: A Masters level degree in a related discipline such as soil science, agroecology, conservation biology, agronomy, silviculture, water quality, environmental chemistry, or agricultural economics or at least 4 years of relevant experience. Knowledge of issues at the interface of agricultural production and environmental stewardship such as water consumption and water quality, habitat protection, soil conservation, nitrogen cycling, and soil carbon sequestration. Excellent written and oral communication skills, especially communicating technical and analytical information in a clear and persuasive manner. Strong technical research, analytical and quantitative skills particularly as it relates to the development of standards and performance-based metrics. Familiarity with related public policy and standards development processes is desirable.

Consulting fees will be based on a nonprofit scale and commensurate with experience. NRDC is committed to diversity and is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Applicants should submit a cover letter, resume and writing sample to: Suzanne Vyborney (svyborney@nrdc.org).

Jonathan Kaplan Natural Resources Defense Council 111 Sutter Street, 20th Floor San Francisco, CA 94104 Phone: 415-875-6100 Fax 415-875-6161 jkaplan@nrdc.org