The labour market has experienced considerable changes in the last years, creating new job opportunities to persons with different kind of background, such as socio-economic and technical-scientific ones. The Faculty of Agricultural Sciences tries to answer to these changes, preparing “new” professionals that are able to deal with the new role that agriculture is getting in the modern community.
In the past, the term agriculture referred only to production of primary resources, such as food; today it means management and preservation of environmental resources, alimentary safety and consumer care.
At present, territorial and environmental themes deals with the need to create a sustainable development in rural areas, increasing local business activities in order to connect primary production and environmental protection.
In this context, by projecting the role of agriculture and of the farm reality towards new horizons, the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of Turin presents itself as a reference point to provide knowledge and methodologies to study primary sector and connected activities - with regard to agronomical, biological, technical, territorial, environmental, socio-cultural, socio-economical aspects - as well as to transfer the scientific knowledge into practice.
The different courses of the Faculty aim at giving to every student a suitable knowledge of general scientific methods and matters, and, at the same time, a specific professional knowledge in many sectors of agricultural, silviculture and agroindustry. The main goal is to assure a suitable cultural growth and a coherent answer to the expectations of the labour market.
The connection of the Faculty with the labour market is also assured by numerous researches, which bring every year a considerable contribution to the progress of agricultural and food industries, both local and national. Current research focuses on the techniques of cultivation in the field and in controlled environment, vegetation genetic improvement and crop protection, soil science and cattle breeding. The present research projects deal with food quality, safety and traceability, with the relation between products and territories, with management of protected areas, urban soils and landscapes, with environment protection and bioenergy production. Since some courses and laboratories activities are hosted outside the main University area of Grugliasco, (Alba, Asti, Cuneo and Sanremo), the interaction with socio- economics and productive local reality is promoted.
International projects keep students, researchers and lecturers in contact with the main international realities, allowing a vision, both local and global, of agriculture and forest systems.