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Agriculture is the world's biggest business. The company of international trade in food and related agricultural products is enormous and increasing all the time. Managers with the highest levels of business skills are required.

Changes in approaches to farming throughout the world and the increasing demands of consumers at the other end of the food chain point to a wide range of career opportunities and challenges for the next generation of graduates from universities and colleges which specialise in the agricultural and land-based industries.

Some of the challenges are daunting. Forecasters are estimating a worldwide population explosion with an increase from the current 2.3 billion people to eight billion by the year 2020. If this prediction proves to be accurate, agriculture will need to produce as much in the next 25 years as it has produced in the last 10,000 years, to meet the inevitable soaring worldwide food demands. It will not be an easy task - water requirements are set to double and top-soil is being lost at a rate of around seven per cent per decade.

The main challenge will be to provide enough food without further damage to the environment and against a background of increasing difficulties due to climatic change and the diminution and pollution of water supplies.

To meet this challenge, highly qualified and motivated professionals, armed with modern marketing, business and communication skills are essential. However, those with more traditional agricultural and land management training will also be required to back them up.

Business courses within universities and colleges, which specialise in agriculture, place strong emphasis on management skills and are geared to prepare students to take on the challenges of a wide and varied range of careers.

Career opportunities cover the whole spectrum of the agricultural industries from farmer to consumer, plough to plate. Choosing the right course is therefore essential.

Employers in the agricultural and land-based sector are setting higher and higher standards and expect their new employees to take a hands-on approach to the business and management aspects of their new careers. Potential students should therefore ensure that the course they choose to follow contains the elements required by their future employers.