Alfred J. Wojta

Alfred J. Wojta (1909 to 1959) was an American agricultural engineer and professor at the University of Wisconsin who developed the Wojta system of surface drainage, a land-forming method that uses shallow channels and land smoothing to improve drainage and reduce soil erosion on agricultural fields. He worked in soil conservation and agricultural engineering, serving in the 1930s as a camp superintendent on Wisconsin soil conservation projects where contour farming, strip cropping and erosion control were put into practice. In 1954 he completed a graduate thesis, Draft Studies of Side-Hitched Implements, on the mechanics of farm equipment, and in 1955 he was promoted from assistant professor to associate professor of agricultural engineering. After his death in Madison in 1959 the system was described in a 1960 publication by Frank V. Burcalow, Russell F. Johannes and Arthur Edwin Peterson, and it was applied in agricultural land management in the Midwestern United States.