A handful of Fleurieu Peninsula towns - and one on Kangaroo Island - are in the running to be crowned the 2020 Ag Town of the Year.

The award is an initiative of the South Australian Government with Solstice Media, the media company whose titles include lifestyle magazine SALife and news website InDaily.

Ag Town of the Year aims to highlight the vital role that agriculture plays in the regional landscape.

There were 70 towns nominated this year, and the public is now being asked to vote for their favourite towns. The votes will be taken into account by an independent judging panel to select a shortlist of five finalists.

The finalist towns will need to submit further information such as a short video and host a visit from the judges.

The winning town in last year’s competition, Cleve on the state’s Eyre Peninsula, received a feature spread in SALife. 

Voting is now open, and votes can be cast online here.

One of the nominees, Parndana, is a community on Kangaroo Island that has done it tough.

Having been heavily impacted by bushfires last summer, the nomination is a nod to the bravery and resilience of the townspeople, who supported each other during the fires as well as in the continuing rebuild period.

Local MP Leon Bignell, who nominated the town, says, “Locals pulled together to fight the fire and then kept farmers productive by helping them shoot stock, clean up their properties, erect new fences, plant crops and re-stock farms which had lost thousands of head of cattle and sheep”.

“It has been an amazing and inspirational effort by the people of this soldier-settler community who defended each other’s properties, attacked the fires and then helped their neighbors pick up the pieces from the devastation. I saw first hand the outstanding commitment of so many individuals,” Mr Bignell says.

“In all my years as a journalist and a member of parliament I’ve never seen community spirit as strong as I witnessed in Parndana and these wonderful people deserve to be crowned the Ag Town of the year.”

Other nominated towns have been acknowledged for innovative farming and growing techniques, quality produce, unique tourism initiatives, and community spirit. 

Among nominees are key wine and tourism regions for the state, livestock producers and dairy farming communities.

The Fleurieu and KI nominees are:

Langhorne Creek

McLaren Vale

Myponga

Normanville

Parndana

Strathalbyn

Victor Harbor

Willunga