Programme Policy Officer (Smallholder Farmer Access to Institutional Markets Consultant)

ABOUT WFP

• The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.
• At WFP, people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse, committed, skilled, and high performing teams, selected on merit, operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment, living WFP's values (Integrity, Collaboration, Commitment, Humanity, and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves.
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WHY JOIN WFP?

• WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
• WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.
• WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.
• A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.
• We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).

JOB TITLE

Programme Policy Officer – Smallholder Farmer Access to Institutional Markets Consultant

TYPE OF CONTRACT

Regular Consultant

JOB GRADE

CST-II

UNIT/DIVISION

Programme

DUTY STATION (City, Country)

Manila, Philippines

DURATION

Six (6) months

CONTEXT

Across the Philippines, smallholder farmers face persistent structural barriers, including limited access to affordable finance, weak market linkages, low integration into formal value chains, and inadequate infrastructure, all of which constrain productivity and reduce incomes. These challenges are compounded by climate vulnerability, high post-harvest losses, limited access to services and technologies, and restricted participation in institutional markets. In the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), these constraints are further intensified. At the same time, the country’s policy environment is increasingly supportive of local farmer access to institutional markets, and multiple public, cooperative and private sector actors have an interest in supporting local farmer participation. The Government of the Philippines is positioning school feeding as a central platform for improving child nutrition, education outcomes, local economic growth, and long‑term human capital development. There is increasing policy momentum to expand and strengthen the national school-based feeding programme (SBFP) with a progressive move toward universal feeding and nutritious hot meals, including the use of central kitchens, fortified foods, and community‑based procurement that prioritizes sourcing from local farmers and cooperatives. However, despite this policy momentum, implementation remains constrained. In practice, procurement approaches and the lack of scalable delivery models continue to limit smallholder participation in institutional markets such as school-based feeding. Aggregation, logistics, traceability, stable supply, quality assurance and payment arrangements remain weak in many areas, and most farmer groups and cooperatives are still at an early stage of market readiness, particularly in the BARMM. This creates a timely policy and operational window to define how smallholder farmers can be linked to school-based feeding in practice and at scale. The WFP Country Office (CO) has developed an internal Market Access and Livelihoods Framework and a smallholder access to markets (SAMS) roadmap that guides inclusive, climate-resilient approaches to strengthen smallholder farmers’ access to markets. WFP Philippines supports the Government through technical assistance and modeling of the Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) approach in BARMM and Luzon. In addition, WFP is supporting the Government in developing a Roadmap for SBFP from 2026-2030 to reach its targets of universal coverage and hot meals, including HGSF scale-up, with a phased plan. Furthermore, WFP along with FAO and UN Women are supporting local food system strengthening by connecting smallholder farmers to institutional feeding markets, with financing, investments and public-private partnerships. These efforts now need scalable delivery models and practical operational arrangements. This consultancy is therefore designed to provide the dedicated technical expertise and time-bound focus to define concrete options for Government action and WFP support, building on the existing SAMS Roadmap.

JOB PURPOSE

The purpose of this consultancy is to provide technical support to WFP’s SAMS, Agricultural Livelihoods and School Feeding teams, and answer the following: What are the most viable and scalable delivery models for school-based feeding for the Department of Education (DepEd) and the BARMM Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education (MBHTE), as well as their School Divisions Offices (SDOs) and Local Government Units (LGUs), to ensure the provision of nutritious hot meals sourced from smallholder farmers at scale? The Consultant will