Agronomy Manager

We at Yara are part of a global network, collaborating to profitably and responsibly solve some of the world's key challenges - resource scarcity, food insecurity and environmental change.

About the Unit

In China, Yara has been present for more than 100 years, being a leading brand in many crop segments and helping farmers increase their incomes. With its headquarters in Shanghai, Yara China (YCN) closely works with in-country stakeholders – including policymakers, academia, commercial and smallholder farmers, retailers and channel partners, and NGOs to identify how the company can best support priorities around food security, farmer livelihoods, sustainability and circular economy across the food value chain.

Responsibilities

The Agronomy Manager will lead the development and implementation of Yara China’s agronomic strategy to strengthen market development impact, improve customer and farmer engagement, and convert Yara’s crop nutrition knowledge into measurable commercial growth. The role is responsible for building crop-based solutions, ensuring high-quality demo trials and technical programs, supporting new product development and registration, and enabling the field team, distributors, key retailers, and farmers to understand and adopt Yara’s value proposition across NPK, fertigation, biologicals, and other strategic portfolios.

This role should act as a technical bridge between Market Development, Key Account, Marketing, Product Management, Supply Chain, regional/global agronomy resources, research institutes, distributors, retailers, and farmers. The position is expected to help Yara China further grow and perform from product selling to solution selling, from activity execution to measurable field impact, and from fragmented agronomy knowledge to scalable, standardized, and digital-enabled crop nutrition programs.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

- Develop and continuously improve Yara China’s crop nutrition programs for key crops including Cash Crops & Field Crops at key provinces, based on crop calendar, market potential, farmer needs, product portfolio, and business priorities.

- Build practical, localized crop solution packages that combine product recommendation, application timing, value proposition, ROI logic, soil health benefits, and farmer communication materials.

- Ensure agronomy plans are linked with market development activities, commercial priorities, growth roadmaps, and annual business planning.

- Ensure all demo trials have clear objectives, standard protocols, control plots, yield and quality measurements, ROI calculation, photo records, and final reports.

- Convert field evidence into convincing business cases, farmer success stories, training materials, and marketing content to support demand generation.

- Work with local research institutes, universities, distributors, retailers, and progressive growers to validate and localize Yara solutions under China market conditions.

- Support Market Development teams to execute high-quality farmer meetings, retailer meetings, field days, in-store promotions, crop clinics, and technical trainings.

- Provide technical guidance to improve the effectiveness of pull activities and ensure every agronomy activity contributes to sell-out, customer loyalty, and market share growth.

- Work closely with Key Account and Marketing teams to ensure technical messages are aligned with customer plans, channel activation campaigns, and product positioning.

- Help develop tools, scripts, presentations, and standard materials to make agronomy communication simple, practical, and persuasive for farmers and retailers.

- Establish and/or review the Business Plan for Agronomy annually

- Technical trainings for whole commercial team

- Products registration to local authorities.

- Contact person for YAA Agronomy, collaborate with YAA Agronomy team to launch, implement, follow up regional initiatives at country level

- Be able to explore Low Carbon Fertilizer project from Region/Global and propose actions to apply it in China conditions.

- Scan partners who are interesting in Low carbon fertilizers and evaluate opportunities to develop and launch this product with these partners.

Essential Responsibilities:

- Agronomy responsibilities, Farmer & Retailer centric

- Development and Management Cash Crops & Field Crops nutrient solutions

- Team management & development to ensure the strong team engagement to drive country goals & transformation.

Profile

- Bachelor’s degree or above in Agronomy, Crop Nutrition, Soil Science, Plant Protection, Horticulture, Agriculture, or related disciplines; master’s degree is preferred.

- Minimum 8 years of relevant experience in agronomy, crop nutrition, market development, technical service, product development, or agricultural input business; team management experience is preferred.

- Solid understanding of China agriculture, cash crops & field crops, regional farming practices, fertilizer market dynamics, distributor and retailer channels, and farmer decision-making behavior.

- Ability to translate technical knowledge into simple, practical, and commercial messages for farmers, retailers, distributors, and internal teams.

- Good communication, influencing, presentation, coaching, and stakeholder management skills.

- Fluent in Chinese and English; able to work effectively in a multinational and matrix organization.

- Strong digital mindset and willingness to adopt CRM, data dashboards, digital agronomy tools, and AI-enabled advisory solutions.

- Self-driven, result-oriented, hands-on, resilient, and able to work under pressure with frequent travel.

Additional Information

Location: Preferably based in Shanghai or Guangzhou, although other locations within China may be considered for the right candidate.
Knowledge grows through differences
Yara is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We believe that creating a diverse and inclusive work environment is not only the right thing, but also the smart thing to do. To deliver on this, Yara has firmly anchored Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) in our business strategy and has more than 400 employees worldwide involved in D&I ambassadors networks.

As part of our recruitment process, where permitted by local law, we may conduct reference and background checks. These checks will only be performed when deemed necessary for the nature of the job. Candidates will be informed by HR before any background checks are initiated.