HARVEY’s Jessica Andony has been recognised as one of the State’s rising stars after winning the inaugural Agriculture Award at the Western Australian Young Achiever Awards on Friday.
Miss Andony was one of eight category winners and was presented with the WAFarmers and Rural Bank prize from a strong field of nominees, including Guy Coleman, Katrina Sasse and Nicholas Hardie.
The 24-year-old’s passion for agriculture was sparked in her childhood while growing up on her family dairy farm at Harvey.
She studied animal science at Murdoch University and since graduating with honours in 2014, has taken a leadership role in supporting the WA dairy industry through her job as research and extension officer at Western Dairy.
Ms Andony said she was humbled to receive the award.
“I hadn’t realised that other people would regard my achievements highly,” she said.
“I do hope that by winning I can encourage and inspire other young people into agriculture, because it really is a great industry to work in.
“Agriculture is such a rewarding industry and I feel I’m lucky in my role, as helping farmers and young farmers to improve their businesses or advance their careers in dairy is rewarding for me.”
While juggling her role as research and extension officer at Western Dairy, Ms Andony also works as WA’s Young Dairy Network co-ordinator.
The network runs several social events, educational workshops and study tours to promote the dairy industry and provide networking opportunities for young agricultural professionals.
“I feel that in agriculture it’s easy to feel like you’re not connected enough with other farmers or young people, as farmers work long hours on individual properties that may be hours apart,” she said.
“Having a local network that meets regularly keeps young farmers connected, helps them build networking relationships and furthers their knowledge.
“We need a strong network of young agriculture people to continue to help educate those not in the agricultural industry on what we do and why we do it.”
Ms Andony was also recognised for the technical, professional and emotional support she provided to the 19 WA dairy farms affected by the Yarloop fires in 2016.
Her family farm was among those burnt, along with several of her neighbours.
“Given that I was in the area and we’d lost 50 per cent of our farm, I was a good contact person to help the farmers,” she said.
“I knew that there were quite a lot of dairy farmers around us that were quite severely affected so I started calling a lot of the farmers I knew.
“I compiled a big spread sheet and found that we had about 12pc of the State’s dairy farmers that had been directly affected through losing land or fencing or all kind of things.”
Ms Andony played a major role in co-ordinating the initial response to support local dairy farmers, ensuring they were able to access fuel, feed and donations.
“A lot of the farmers at the time didn’t have power, they were all running on generators and a couple of farmers had run out of diesel so they couldn’t milk their cows,” she said.
“Through working with a couple of other colleagues we managed to get fuel to those farmers.”
In the following months, Ms Andony provided follow-up support to those affected, assisting with paperwork and directing donations.
“We were trying hard to make sure that our farmers, who we knew had lost 1000 acres of land and fencing, were accessing some of those donations.”
Ms Andony was unable to attend the ceremony at Pan Pacific last week due to prior commitments, but was represented on the night by her mother who accepted the award on her behalf.
