The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Olericulture as "a branch of horticulture that deals with the production, storage, processing, and marketing of vegetables." This type of study is considered a branch of the Agricultural Sciences, one that studies crop plants.
Career prospects in Olericulture include conventional, greenhouse and organic farming, horticultural teaching and research, produce marketing and management, and nursery marketing and management. Post graduate studies include research into genomics, plant-based medicine, environmental protection, and more.
The relationship between Olericulture and the envirornment is especially important with respect to the future of worldwide produce production. To illustrate, the McGill School of Environment program description for their emphasis in Food Production and the Environment offers insight into why large-scale food production and the need for environmental protection are intertwined:
The business of food production is an area of human activity with a large and intimate interaction with the environment. Modern agriculturalists must strike a delicate balance between trying to provide food for themselves, their families and urban dwellers while trying to minimize environmental damage. When negative effects due to agricultural activities do occur, they are not usually the classic point source effects that we have come to associate with industry or large cities. Rather, the effects are over extremely large land areas cumulating, perhaps, in pollution of river systems or lakes some distance away. As world populations grow, and as diets change, potentially negative interactions between agricultural systems and other facets of the environment will become more frequent. In the same way, urban sprawl will make conflicts between agriculture and urbanites more common.
Find out more information on McGill's Agricultural and Environment Program.
