The Australian Society of Agronomy
Way back......
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, agriculture related conferences were organised under the auspices of the Standing Committee of Agriculture. Proposals would come to the committee through State Departments of Agriculture or the Commonwealth Department of Primary Industries. If approved, responsibility for organising the conference was delegated to a group of people, usually in a State Department. An organising committee would be formed and this generally included representatives from each state, CSIRO and a university representative.
The genesis of the Society
During the mid 1970’s, a small group began to propose the formation of an Australian Society of Agronomy. They spoke about the need for such a Society at Grassland and Cereal Agronomy Conferences. Mr Dennis de Kantzow and Dr Bruce Sutton of the Department of Agronomy at the University of Sydney and Dr Jim Davidson of CSIRO took the initiative. Two meetings were convened in 1978/79 which were hosted by Professor Mike Norman at Sydney University. A group of interested people from a range of organisations attended and there was a representative or a proxy from each state.
The Logo
The current logo was developed for the 19th Agronomy Conference in Wagga Wagga, 2019. It was designed to represent the soil/plant/atmosphere continuum, with emphasis on plants and the sun, because of the plant’s dependence on solar radiation.
Executive Officer
Linda Bennison was appointed in 2015 as the first Executive Officer of the Australian Society of Agronomy Inc. She worked with committees from Tasmania (2015), Victoria (2017), New South Wales (2019) and Queensland (2022), to update the Society's Rules create websites (general society site, conference site, and archival proceedings site) along with establishing a social media presence on Twitter and YouTube channels. Dr Sue Knights replaced Linda in February 2022.
