If you go on to the vacancies portal of any of the major agri-food companies in Ireland, you will see a list of openings that would not look out of place at any other large corporation.

They are looking for qualified accountants, people with expertise in human resources, software engineers, sales people and even sometimes people to run their social media accounts.

While a background in agriculture is useful to understand the full life cycle of whatever product you were to end up involved with, it is skills learned beyond that farm gate that will land you the job.

Furthermore, while a third-level agricultural or food science qualification is definitely useful for some parts of the industry, there are many paths which can be taken to a successful agri-food career.

So, the first lesson in getting a job in the agri-food industry is that you do not have to have a specialised third-level agri-food qualification.

The second lesson for landing the career you want is to know where the industry is, and where it is going next.

Irish food producers are, in many cases, multinational organisations producing high-value business-to-business and business-to-customer food solutions. To put that another way, these days everything a food company does is about maximising value from the raw material delivered by farmers.

Some have even used the experience gained from these markets to move further away from their farming roots.

There are companies founded in Ireland’s dairy industry for whom milk is now a tiny proportion of their turnover.

Glanbia, for example, now makes a significant portion of its revenue from its Optimum Nutrition brand aimed at athletes and body-builders.

Global corporation

Likewise, Kerry is mostly a taste and nutrition global corporation these days, with its Dairy Ireland business accounting for less than a fifth of its turnover.

Kerry’s graduate programme looks for people with degrees in food science, but also for graduates with mechanical engineering, IT, accounting, business and marketing qualifications.

The only common theme that we could see from all the employers we looked at was that they wanted people who have a passion for the industry

Bord Bia’s ever-popular graduate programme accepts applications from “graduates from any discipline”.

Food is big business, and Ireland’s biggest food companies are really big businesses.

Whether you are a food-science graduate, an accountant, a marketing specialist or have a gift for administration, there are positions available across the industry.

There are many, many ways into your agribusiness career.

The only common theme that we could see from all the employers we looked at was that they wanted people who have a passion for the industry. And that, at least, is probably learned inside the farm gate.