Agriculture Specialist: Origination

**Job Advert Summary**:
The Land and Agricultural Development Bank of South Africa (Land Bank) is South Africa’s only specialist agricultural bank established in 1912, the bank’s sole objective is to serve South African commercial and emerging farmers and bring specially designed financial services within their reach. These services enable farmers to finance land, equipment, improve assets and obtain production credit. The Land Bank provides financial services that have moved with the times and continues to provide services to agri-business and constantly reviews its offerings to ensure that they match the needs of an industry. As change has swept across the sector in South Africa the socio-economic makeup of agriculture has altered, bringing new entrants from historically disadvantaged backgrounds on to the land, these new farmers, facing the challenges of establishing sustainable agri-businesses across the agricultural value chain, Land Bank has been a commercial lifeline offering appropriately designed financial products that facilitate personal and commercial viability in a sector that is vital to the sustainability of South Africa and its people.

**MAIN PURPOSE **OF THE JOB**

**Key Performance Areas**:
**1. Specialist Inputs into Business Case Viability**
- Provide specialist support to Commercial Bankers to enable the structuring of appropriate financial solutions and feasible transactions.
- Complete and submit detailed reports as part of a comprehensive assessment of potential business transactions, including
- As part of the assessment process, undertake amongst others:

- Determine the development phase of the farming venture and conditions of the infrastructure, management skills, topography, accessibility, development potential of the farm, grazing component and carrying capacity and any other relevant general conditions.
- Responsible for conducting the required valuation of the entity’s assets through an on-site visit to the business property to evaluate the viability of financing customers, based on the strength of their assets.
- Inspect crops on the land and calculate the net realisation and impact on financial position.
- Determine the realisable value movable assets Identify and locate security offered.
- Determine the value of buildings and other improvements and contribution towards production value
- Calculate the production value and related loan value based on the information gathered.
- Determine justification of applicants’ financing requests.
- Make recommendations regarding the merit of financing requests, the appropriate terms and conditions.

**2. Provincial Agricultural Knowledge Database and Knowledge Sharing**
- Collect, process, and package information within the allocated area of responsibility, including amongst others, the determination of the following:

- Market value of property
- Production costs
- Establishment costs
- Profit margins
- Produce prices
- Market trends
- Economic patterns
- Potential of land
- Keep the database up to date as appropriate and share at a divisional level
- Contribute information to the national agricultural specialists’ database
- Ensure availability and access to identified users.
- Transfer knowledge to the team to empower them in understanding the technical context.

**3. Customer and Stakeholder Relationship Management**
- Build, foster and maintain consistent, effective and strong relationships with key role players and strengthen relationships with the potential to secure new business opportunities for the bank.
- Represent Land Bank in appropriate forums and events as appropriate.
- Ensure that all stakeholders remain aware of the value of the Land Bank’s products, the processes and principles related to agricultural financing within the Land Bank environment.
- Stay up to date with provincial initiatives and developments and further strengthen the relationship to assess further business opportunities to promote long term mutually beneficial relationships

**Preferred Minimum Education and Experience**:

- A relevant 3 year qualification in Agriculture or an equivalent
- 5 years experience in Agricultural Extension Services or
- 5 years experience in Agricultural businesses, a Co-op, or similar organisations

**Critical Competencies**:

- Microsoft Office
- Knowledge / Experience of financial and business analytical principles, tools and systems
- Property Valuation Principles
- Agricultural Economics
- Risk Management Principles
- Lending / Credit Assessment Principles
- Financial and Business Acumen

**Additional Requirements**:

- Extended hours as and when required
- Travel as and when required
- Needs to keep abreast with agricultural economic trends