Agronomy Society of New Zealand - President’s Report 2014
The focus of the Agronomy Council this year has been to continue looking at ways of increasing the profile of the Society amongst the wider community, and increase our membership. Static and declining memberships are common issues facing agronomy societies, and indeed, many other agricultural science bodies around the world.
We are building on the work done in previous years, in particular the website and getting the Society proceedings up to date and published on our website. You can now access proceedings from 2000-2013 on the website, and shortly we will have the 2014 proceedings available via the website as well. Work to get earlier proceedings on the website will be undertaken, but not all of these are in digital format yet. A big thanks to Robert Southward and Craig McGill for doing the work needed to get the proceedings onto the website.
One of the tasks that took a large amount of time this year for council members was editing the proceedings. With Craig McGill resigning from that role last year due to increased responsibilities at Massey University, the council took on the role of editing while the process of finding an editor proceeded. I would like to thank all the council members who stepped up to ensure that papers were edited. In particular a big thank you to Paul Johnstone, Bill Bussell and Craig McGill. I would though also like to thank the authors and referees who also made the effort to complete papers in a timely manner. It has been a real team effort with the whole Council helping. As NZGA will also need to appoint an editor for next year, Council will look at the possibility of appointing a joint editor for the proceedings.
Much work has been put into thinking about our image and about ways to increase our profile and attract more members. As part of this the Council followed up on the design of a new logo which will be presented to Society members for approval. A big thanks to Murray Craighead for spearheading the logo development. A small sub-committee has suggested a way forward to help the Council develop new approaches to engage with the wider agricultural community to increase our profile, and a big thanks to Craig McGill and Murray Craighead for organising this. Society members are invited to comment on this and contribute with ideas and enthusiasm to enhance the Society’s profile.
To finish, I want to thank all Council members for the time they put into attending meetings, working on special projects, and editing the proceedings. The Agronomy Society could not function without the hard work of your Council. Thank you all.
Posted: Wed 07 Jan 2015