Senior Manager, Agriculture & Food Systems

Senior Manager, Agriculture & Food Systems

Who You Are

• You are an experienced agriculture and food systems leader who can translate strategy into strong programs, systems, partnerships, and measurable results.
• You understand agricultural production, but you also see the larger food system, how farms, infrastructure, procurement, food access, community agriculture, health initiatives, partnerships, and funding work together.
• You are a strong people and program manager who can lead managers, establish accountability, manage budgets and grants, build external partnerships, and strengthen systems across multiple locations.
• You are comfortable moving between the farm, community, partner meetings, budgets, data, and organizational planning.
• You are motivated by agriculture's potential to improve food security, health, economic opportunity, and community resilience.

What You Will Do

The Senior Manager, Agriculture & Food Systems provides strategic and operational leadership for AfriThrive's agriculture portfolio. The position oversees farm production and community agriculture programs while strengthening the systems, partnerships, infrastructure, and resources necessary for sustainable growth. The Senior Manager ensures that AfriThrive's agriculture investments support the organization's broader food access, Food as Medicine, community engagement, and health equity goals.

Agriculture Strategy & Portfolio Leadership

• Lead implementation and continuous improvement of AfriThrive’s agriculture and food systems strategy, including annual goals, workplans, budgets, production priorities, and performance measures.
• Translate organizational priorities and program demand into coordinated plans across farm production, community agriculture, and school garden sites.
• Drive the growth, sustainability, infrastructure, and overall impact of the agriculture portfolio.

Agricultural Venture & Financial Sustainability

• Develop and implement a strategy to grow AfriThrive’s agriculture operations into a financially sustainable, mission-aligned venture with clear revenue, cost-recovery, and margin targets.
• Develop enterprise budgets and analyze production costs, labor, yields, crop losses, market demand, and revenue potential to guide what, where, and how much AfriThrive grows.
• Develop reliable markets and earned-revenue opportunities with institutional buyers, healthcare partners, restaurants, retailers, food hubs, and culturally specific markets.
• Balance production for Food as Medicine and food access programs with market-based production and other earned-revenue opportunities.
• Monitor financial performance and identify opportunities to increase productivity, reduce losses and costs, improve margins, and responsibly scale viable agricultural enterprises.

Team Leadership & Accountability

• Supervise and support the farm staff, establishing clear expectations, workplans, performance measures, and accountability.
• Build a strong team culture through coaching, communication, training, appropriate staffing, safety, and continuous improvement.
• Partner with HR on recruitment, onboarding, performance management, and professional development.

Farm Production Oversight

• Provide strategic oversight of multi-site farm production while delegating day-to-day operations to the Farm Operations Manager.
• Review production plans, targets, labor needs, yields, quality, losses, and operational efficiency.
• Ensure production aligns with Food as Medicine, food access, and market commitments, and support resolution of significant operational challenges.

Community Agriculture & Education

• Provide strategic oversight of community and school gardens, agriculture education, and related community agriculture initiatives.
• Support the Community Agriculture Program Manager in delivering strong workplans, partnerships, educational programming, and measurable outcomes.
• Expand meaningful agriculture opportunities for community members, youth, volunteers, and beginning farmers.

Infrastructure, Equipment & Food Systems Capacity

• Lead long-term planning for irrigation, greenhouses/ high tunnels, cold storage, equipment, vehicles, and other agriculture infrastructure.
• Strengthen preventive maintenance, asset management, safety, and efficient resource utilization.
• Improve integration among production, procurement, storage, transportation, and distribution.

Partnerships & Market Development

• Build strategic relationships with landowners, farmers, universities, government agencies, schools, funders, buyers, healthcare organizations, and agriculture organizations.
• Represent AfriThrive in relevant agriculture and food systems partnerships, coalitions, and initiatives.
• Develop opportunities for land access, infrastructure, markets, research, technical assistance, and workforce development.

Grants, Budgets & Resource Development

• Manage agriculture budgets and ensure responsible use of financial and operational resources.
• Partner with Development to identify funding opportunities, contribute technical expertise to proposals, and diversify agriculture funding.
• Oversee agriculture-related grants and contracts, ensuring timely implementation, compliance, deliverables, documentation, and reporting.

Data, Evaluation & Reporting

• Establish and monitor KPIs for production, revenue, costs, margins, yields, losses, acreage, participation, and other program and operational outcomes.
• Ensure reliable data collection and use results to improve performance, guide investments, and support business and program decisions.
• Provide regular performance updates for executive leadership, Board, organizational, and funder reporting.

Food Safety, Compliance & Risk Management

• Ensure compliance with applicable food safety, worker safety, environmental, and organizational requirements.
• Maintain strong SOPs, staff training, documentation, safety, and risk-management systems across agriculture sites.
• Identify significant operational and financial risks early and ensure timely corrective action.