Duhons win Vermilion Parish Rotary's Farmer of The Year award

For so many farmers, the effort is about family.
That is truly the case when it comes to this year’s Rotary Club of Abbeville Farmer of the Year Award. On Nov. 19, the club presented the honor to Kelsi and Amanda Duhon.
“It is definitely an honor,” Amanda Duhon. “We were very shocked. We’re just so thankful to be a part of this community.”
Rotarian Mark Shirley, who announced the Duhons as the honorees, said it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“Kelsi and Amanda Duhon represent the very best of Louisiana agriculture,” Shirley said. “They are hardworking, humble and deeply committed to their family, their farm and their community.”
Kelsi Duhon is a sixth-generation sugarcane and cattle farmer in the north Vermilion Parish area. Amanda Duhon is a first-generation row crop farmer and fourth-generation cattle rancher. Today, the Duhons help manage a 980-acre farm focused on sugarcane, hay and cattle. Their sons, Wyatt, Walker and Wiley, are involved, too.
“It’s God and then it’s family,” Amanda Duhon said. “Our kids are jumping in with two feet already, and that’s their choice. Our middle one says he does not want to be a farmer, yet he’s already a beekeeper. He wants to be a veterinarian. My oldest already said he wants to be a farmer, and we can hardly get our littlest one out of the tractor, so I’m sure he’s going to want to do something with farming as well.”
The Duhons work to promote farming away from their own land. Kelsi Duhon serves on the board of directors for Vermilion Farm Bureau. Amanda Duhon serves as the chair for the Young Farmers and Ranchers Committee for Lafayette Parish. Together, they are on the Louisiana Farm Bureau’s state-level Young Farmers and Ranchers committee.
“This is the future of agriculture,” Shirley said proudly.
Hilton Waits, an extension agent with the LSU AgCenter office in Vermilion, offered another point of pride for the Duhons.
“They’re both graduates of the Vermilion 4-H program,” Waits said happily.
The Duhons are happy to receive this recognition from the Rotary Club.
“I think it’s such a wonderful thing that they promote farming each year,” Amanda Duhon said. “They give farmers a place to be recognized and be thought of.”