Nowadays, the food sector has a high demand for qualified professionals.

Graduates-profileIn terms of environmental and social responsibility, the job market is experiencing an evolution in its needs: from employees with specialised skills towards employees that are able to function in a more complex environment and cope with changing expectations from consumers.

Highly skilled academics and production managers

To seize these developments, food companies are looking for highly skilled academics and production managers able to integrate sustainability in their activities, taking into account the:

- international context in which companies operate,
- increasing constraints related to food safety, food quality and processing,
- conservation of the environment,
- corporate and social / societal responsibilities.

Meeting the needs of the food industry

Moreover, the food industry also indicates that there is a need for employees who are focusing on more than one topic within the company - be it sales, R&D, production, etc.
– employees who can make the link between different departments and coordinate projects where collaboration is necessary. Therefore, it is important to educate generalists instead of specialists.

More information on programme content

sustainabilityTraining the managers of the food sector 

These generalists will gain basic knowledge in all topics that are relevant for the food industry, such as sustainability, supply chain, entrepreneurship, and new developments, combined with a specialization in a specific field of interest.

In their final year, the students will need to implement all this knowledge in problem-based project work and cases from the industry. They need to show that they can collaborate with different profiles in different contexts on different topics within a company.

managers-agricultureThis joint MSc programme Sustainable Food Systems will increase the number of academics in the agricultural sector and food sector by educating future academics and managers for food companies and organisations to manage food processing and other food production related activities in a sustainable way.