Careers › Engineering

How to become a Agricultural Engineer

Applies engineering to farming - irrigation, machinery, food systems.

This needs more than the degree

An engineering degree alone doesn’t make you a Professional Engineer. You register with ECSA as a Candidate Engineer after graduating, then need several years of supervised experience and a professional review before you can register as a Pr Eng and sign off your own work.

What does a Agricultural Engineer actually do?

More about this career

Applies engineering to farming and food production – irrigation systems, farm machinery, storage and processing infrastructure. It’s a smaller field than the core engineering disciplines, with most jobs in agribusiness, irrigation design and government agricultural departments.

Where this degree can take you

  • Irrigation Engineer
  • Farm Machinery Engineer
  • Food Processing Engineer
  • Agricultural Consultant

This is our general description of the role and related jobs, not from an official source – it’s here to give you a fuller picture, not as a careers-counselling guarantee.

Not from an official source

Subjects that usually help

  • Mathematics
  • Physical Sciences
  • Agricultural Sciences (helpful)

This is our general guidance about which school subjects suit this career. It is not an admission requirement and not from an official source – the real requirements are on the degrees below.

Not from an official source

Where to check this yourself

What the programmes we’ve captured actually ask for

  • Mathematics – asked for by 1 of 1 programmes
  • Physical Sciences – asked for by 1 of 1 programmes

Counted from the requirements below (an “or” alternative counts for each subject named). Each programme links to the page it came from.

Programmes that lead here

1 programme at 1 university. More are added as we verify them.

University of KwaZulu-Natal

From an older document

BSc Eng Agricultural Engineering

Agriculture, Engineering & Science · 4 years

UKZN APS 33 points out of 48

  • Mathematics: 65%
  • Physical Sciences: 65%
  • English: level 4 (50% or more)
  • Life Orientation: level 4 (50% or more)

The published APS range is 48-33. CONFIRMED 2026-10-02 for every discipline: a user-supplied copy of UKZN’s own Undergraduate Degree Requirements Guide lists Agricultural, Chemical, Civil, Computer, Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering as one merged table row sharing this exact entry text and APS range - so this is UKZN’s own stated position that all seven share the formula, not just an inference from Agricultural and Chemical’s own pages (both separately confirmed live, 2026-10-02). This comes from the Study@UKZN 2026 brochure, the most recent official source we could find. UKZN had not published a 2027 table when we checked, so treat these as 2026 figures pending a 2027 update. Applications go through the CAO.

Source: View the official page (studyatukzn.ukzn.ac.za) (opens the official page)

Are your marks enough?

Put your subjects in once and we’ll check them against every programme above – scored each university’s own way.

What do I qualify for?