re: #371 ggt

Go for it! Horticulture is going to be a good field in the years to come, IMHO.

Thank you for the encouragement.

In this country lately Horticulture departments in college have been under pressure due to the need to seem more “advanced” or elite, and the term “horticulture” is being used less and less as fancier phrases are concocted. On the other side the glibertarians want to destroy the whole extension system, the land grant college system, and the USDA. Now, the USDA does have its problems but the many people who have worked through the various programs have helped change this country for the better.

I do think that there will be, increasingly during this century, the realization that small scale and local farming, as well as urban horticulture, is vital to everybody’s well being. Industrial scale ag is on a one way trip to extinction, even if it takes a century before politics realizes that.

Water problems are raining down upon us, food production will be seen as so vital to national interests that I would not be surprised if in a few decades if wars over food, water, and land drive international relations.

Anyway, I’d be interested in working on sustainable producing arboriculture for the small scale. From introducing new species to improved cultivars (especially by genetic engineering) of the current basis of our fruit and nut diets, there is a lot of work to be done.