About the Australian Society of Agronomy

The Australian Society of Agronomy is the professional body for agronomists in Australia and New Zealand. It has approximately 500 active members drawn from government, universities, research organisations and the private sector.

Click here to view the ASA Constitution

The primary function of the society is to host a biennial national conference. This is attended by most members and is the main activity on the professional program. A committee of ASA members from the conference host state forms the ASA executive for two years and coordinates the event.

A feature of the conference is the awarding of the Donald Medal to an emininent agriculturalist.

Opening the 10th Australian Agronomy Conference in Hobart, then Governor, Sir Guy Green, commented on the contribution of the agronomy profession to Australian society. He compared advances in agronomy to those in other fields of endeavour, communication and aviation, saying if we lost all our computers, phones and planes it would have less impact than if society lost the advances made by the science of agronomy over the years.

Conference proceedings

The Society has adopted an innovative approach to publishing the conference proceedings, which are now available online prior to the conference and on a CD in delegate satchels.

“One important advance in technology is in the use of improved computing power, via the Internet and electronic information exchange. We have taken the step of organising the conference as far as possible electronically, including producing the proceedings on CD. The hard copy proceedings of the 9th Conference weighed in at 2.5 kg, which we felt was becoming unmanageable. Copies of the 9th Proceedings are still available for sale if you wish to purchase one as a piece of history! We are collaborating with The Regional Institute to put proceedings of all past Agronomy Conferences on their web site, to be freely available and searchable. This will help to make an invaluable resource available to researchers, advisors, farmers and students.” Neville Mendham, Chair, 10th Agronomy Conference: Science and Technology: Delivering Results for Agriculture

This approach has improved the professionalism of paper submissions and reduced the post conference workload. A beneficial side effect has been the training of authors in document presentation as all papers are required to follow a standard set of Microsoft Word guidelines.