Forty years ago, Ottawa’s Harvey Voldeng took a minor cash crop and bred it into a powerhouse that today is worth $1.9 billion a year in Ontario alone.
Soybeans are now Ontario’s biggest crop, and the fourth-largest (by sales) in Canada.
All that from a legume that originally wouldn’t grow beyond the hot zone south of Guelph — until the mid-1970s, when Voldeng bred a breakthrough at the Central Experimental Farm: A soybean that thrives in short summers.
Today, the reason your supermarket is piled high with margarine, chicken, tofu, and hundreds of other products begins with Voldeng’s breeding program in Ottawa. He gave us a soybean variety called Maple Arrow in 1976.
This variety and its offspring quickly spread all through Eastern and Central Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. They provide widely used oil and also improve farm soil when used in rotation with grains.
And being are high in protein, the crushed beans are fed to livestock.
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