Charles Ambrose Zavitz

Charles Ambrose Zavitz was a Canadian agronomist who helped revolutionize field crop agriculture in Ontario and pioneered the commercial production of soybeans in Canada. After graduating from the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph in 1886, he was hired there as a junior chemist, rose to Assistant Superintendent of Experiments in 1888, and became head of the college's new Department of Field Husbandry in 1904. He revitalized the Ontario Agricultural and Experimental Union, a farmer cooperative testing network that by 1924 had grown to more than 100,000 farmers running crop experiments on their own land, driving substantial increases in Ontario crop yields. The University of Toronto awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science in 1916 for his agricultural research.