This year's Pinnacle Awards for Excellence, run jointly by leading environmental consultancy ADAS and The Farmers Club, demonstrated that the UK agricultural industry is in safe hands as students stepped up to tackle current farming issues.

The Awards, open to students enrolled on full time agricultural and rural business management courses at colleges throughout the UK, encourage young agricultural talent to develop feasible business strategies and challenge students to devise innovative solutions to real business problems. A prize fund of over £6000 is available to students and their education institutions, kindly donated each year by The Cave Foundation.

Against a backdrop of volatile world markets, intensifying competition and a greater focus on sustainable land management, many entries drew on diversification as a way of increasing revenue sustainably and seeing farm businesses through the recession.

Candidates for the competition are put forward by universities and colleges. The final award went to George Hood, a final year student at Reading University, who developed a business strategy to improve the business prospects of a large mixed farm and impressed judges with his idea of expanding the current organic beef enterprise, extracting sand underlying what is currently very poor productive land and suggesting that after extraction the site could be established for course fishing, so meeting the business and social responsibility aspirations of the owners. He also provided practical suggestions on how the farm's shop could be expanded to increase revenue.

Brian Angell, Agricultural and Rural Advice Product Leader at ADAS, commented: "It's fantastic to be a part of this - we place a great deal of importance on investing in the UK's agricultural future, and the finalists who literally came from Lands' End to John O'Groats should all be extremely proud of themselves. More than anything else, this was about giving something back to the industry, and investing in young agricultural talent."

The Awards, now in their twelfth year, encourage and reward innovation and creativity. All eight finalists were assessed on both the originality of their ideas and their ability to communicate them, undergoing both a panel interview and presentation to other competitors and tutors.

Brian explained: "It's crucial that agricultural management tempers creativity with practicality and the ability to communicate ideas with others, including potential investors, industry colleagues, and other industry figures. The Awards are designed to test students fully on each of these criteria."

The judging panel was chaired by Prof David Leaver, previously Principle of the Royal Agricultural College and included Tony Turner, Senior Farm Business Consultant at ADAS, John Reynolds Chairman of the Farmers Club, Don Gomery, editor of The Farmers Club Journal, and Roy Walker, a Trustee of the Cave Foundation. George won £1,250 for his proposals, along with £1,250 for Reading University. Judging took place at a ceremony in London at the end of last week.

Delighted to have received recognition for his hard work, George said: "I don't think I've ever thought in so much detail about a piece of work in my life. I knew I had to justify each and every aspect of my plan, and that this would be crucial in communicating its viability. As well as that, having to summarise such a huge project in a relatively short amount of time was a real test - but again, it's superb to say I've done it, and it's given me real confidence in my own abilities and communication skills for the future."

Runners up included Alice Berryman, studying at The Royal Agricultural College, who looked to generate additional revenue for a farm by converting a redundant building into a rural nursery, and Jill Brown, currently a student at SAC Aberdeen who analysed facilities and packaging within the egg industry to ascertain the impact of new regulations on a business that has been trading since 1946.

Don Gomery, Editor of the Farmers Club Journal, sat on the judging panel and was delighted with the pool of talent coming forward in this year's competition: "It's absolutely thrilling that the competition is stronger and perhaps more competitive than ever," he said. "The winners and finalists should take a great deal from this, both in that they have been highly recommended by their own educational institutions, and also that they have all performed exceptionally well under some deliberately testing circumstances - it is a tribute to the standard of young agricultural managerial talent in the UK, and more importantly, to the entrants themselves."

John Reynolds, Chairman of the Farmers Club, hopes that the Awards will encourage more innovation in the agricultural industry: "The partnership between The Farmers Club, ADAS and the Cave Foundation was a fundamental part of the Awards, and I was very pleased to be involved. We were extremely impressed with the entries, as they can only encourage young graduates to keep coming forward with truly innovative thoughts and ideas. I do hope we will continue to see more of the same moving forward, with more young farmers taking advantage of these Awards to share in and celebrate agricultural knowledge, as they develop in their technical and social lives."

The prizes will be formally presented at the final Royal Show, which is due to be held in July this year.