Lambton County’s Carolynne Griffith has been named to the Ontario Agriculture Hall of Fame.
Griffith was nominated by the Egg Farmers of Ontario, an organization she led as chairperson for a decade.
“It’s a little mind-boggling, really,” Griffith said about being named to the hall of fame. “When you go through your life you don’t really think about any honors, but this is truly a wonderful honor.”
Griffith is one of 11 individuals named to join the provincial hall of fame later this year, and the only woman on the list.
She was raised on a farm in what was then Sarnia Township and was teaching at the former Blackwell school in 1963 when she married Art Griffith.
They eventually took on operating his family’s farm in what was Brooke Township.
It was during the late 1980s and early 1990s when Canada and the US were talking about entering a free trade deal that Griffith became more involved in the provincial egg producers’ group.
“I was sure that our government wouldn’t be able to maintain supply management,” Griffith said.
Eggs are one of the farm commodities under the supply management system in Canada where quotas match domestic production to the country’s demand for the product and tariffs limit imports.
“Even though we always allowed American product into the egg market, they always wanted more,” she said. “It was like a mouse trying to negotiate with an elephant.”
Griffith said she and Art would attend the local monthly meetings of the egg producers in Lambton.
“We were both committee people,” she said. “They used to call them ‘committee men.’”
Griffith said it took some time for that title to be changed.
“I was sure that these men wouldn’t be able to save us,” she said about what spurred her on to get more involved during the free trade debate.
Her husband also encouraged her to get more involved in the provincial organization. While he would attend the local egg producer meetings, he would much rather spend his time on the farm.
“He said, ‘You’re a better speaker than I am,’ and he gave me a lot of reasons why I should do it. So I thought, ‘Well, I think I can do as good a job as these guys.’”
While few women were, or are, involved in serving on the provincial organization’s board, women have always been heavily involved in the actual work of running farms, Griffith said.
Griffith became a provincial director in 1996 and chairperson in 2002. She served as chairperson of the Egg Farmers of Ontario until 2012.
During that time, Griffith was also selected to be chairperson of a group representing Ontario’s five supply managed farm organizations and she made several trips to Geneva, Switzerland where the World Trade Organization was holding free trade talks.
“Every time they have free trade talks, they give away a little more of our market,” Griffith said.
Canada’s egg industry targets production to supply domestic consumption and doesn’t plan to export, she said.
“I’ve always felt that every country could have the ability to produce for your own people and I think the pandemic shows how important that is,” Griffith said.
“Supply management proved in that time to be just what we needed to keep eggs, milk and chicken on the counter. We weren’t dependent on imports from anywhere.”
Serving with the commodities groups overseas was a great opportunity and “one that I never thought I’d have,” Griffith said.
“Actually, I was at a meeting in Geneva when my husband died in 2008 in July.”
Both Griffith and her late husband have also been named to Lambton County’s Agricultural Hall of Fame, and the farm they expanded together is now run by their son who has continued to expand the operation.
The Ontario Agriculture Hall of Fame said this year’s inductees were selected “based on their life-long commitments to Ontario agriculture,” according to a news release.
This year’s induction ceremony is set for June 11 in Elora.