Arved Toots

Arved Toots (1930 to 1992) was an Estonian agronomist and breeder of Tori horses. Born near Aravete in Kantküla into a farming family, he studied at the Jäneda Agricultural School from 1946 to 1949 and began work as an agronomist at the machine-tractor station in Ambla. From 1955 he was an agronomist at the collective farm Murrang, renamed the Aravete collective farm in 1958, department head there from 1970 until his retirement in 1992, and head of the Aravete Tori horse farm from 1955 to 1992. He changed the farm's breeding direction toward a more slender, stronger-boned, taller Tori horse suited to sport, and by the mid-1970s Aravete was declared the best farm in Estonia, named the best Tori horse breeding farm in 1979 and the years after. He was also a long-term member of the board of the Horse Breeding Council in Estonia.