Climate change will push syrup producers to tap trees farther north and put the US industry at risk.
(Bloomberg) — It’s deep into winter on the northern fringe of the Quebec maple groves that feed Alan Bryson’s syrup-making operation and it’s so warm that tree sap has already started flowing.
“We’re seeing the maples trying to run in January when they’re really not supposed to,” the 47-year-old said from a wood shack in Notre-Dame-de-la-Merci in a wilderness expanse that’s a 90-minute drive north of Montreal. Unlike with his southernmost US counterparts, such mild trends could really boost his maple syrup output. “These extreme conditions have created the worst for us and the best for us.”
Warming winters are set to create regional winners and losers in the $1.5-billion industry, with US farmers at greatest risk. Bryson’s yields have more than doubled in the past decade, partly due to something the Canadian can’t control — weather. A longer spell of freezing and thawing in 2022 led to his best year ever, as his six-man crew boiled sap gathered from 40,000 taps a record 32 times. The climate shift that favored Bryson’s harvest is set to bring more volatile weather, making production on both sides of the border more challenging.
The world’s maple syrup production is concentrated in Canada and the northern US, where sugar maples grow. Some southern states, such as Virginia and Kentucky, also make syrup. The North American industry has existed since the late 1700s after Indigenous peoples showed European settlers how to turn sap into the sticky sweet treat that has become the popular pancake topper.
Milder winters threaten to upend the delicate balance needed to make the breakfast staple. Sap used to produce syrup is only triggered when daytime temperatures flip between freezing and thawing during a narrow window of time in late winter.
“When I was little, my dad would say, ‘don’t tap until March 15’,” said Helen Thomas, who with her two sisters operates the sixth-generation Maxon Estate Farms near Buffalo, New York. “If we waited until March 15 now we’d miss half the season.”
Temperature swings have become much more extreme and winters are getting shorter, Thomas, 70, said. She has seen years when March gets too warm too fast, hurting production at the family-run farm that dates to the early 1800s.
“We get many more days where it’s warm in the middle of February and the middle of March,” she said. “I don’t remember those as a kid.”
Milder temperatures also make tree sap less sweet, which means it takes more to make syrup. Weather extremes can also cut output and cause calamities such as drought and pests that shrink the amount of sap a tree yields. Farmers in Canada and the US increasingly worry about how climate change could hinder operations.
“The southern limits of sugar maple are getting hit the hardest already,” said Joshua Rapp, a conservation scientist at Mass Audubon in Massachusetts, noting there have been years when producers in parts of the US were barely able to collect enough sap. “There’s some indications where there’s not enough of those sweet spots to produce syrup.”
His projections suggest sap collection will be negligible in Virginia and Indiana by the end of the century, while Massachusetts and New Hampshire sites will produce only half their historical average. Output in Quebec’s most northern site will nearly double.
Such challenges loom as consumers demand more syrup. The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, the agency charged with setting prices and output in the world’s top-producing region, had a record bounty last year and expects to sell 179.2 million pounds in its current marketing year. Meanwhile, US production rose 35% in 2022, with the earliest sap flow reported on New Year’s Day in Vermont and New York, according the US Department of Agriculture.
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Producers are already adjusting operations to adapt to earlier harvests and less predictable weather. Many are focusing more on the health of maples and using specialized vacuum pumps to pull more sap from trees.
Canada’s northerly expanse offers a competitive advantage in weathering the future. The potential to draw more sap from Canadian maples is probably tenfold what is currently tapped, said Tim Rademacher, a researcher at Quebec’s Center ACER, which specializes in the industry. Production could rise in parts of northern Quebec, the Maritimes and Ontario, he said.
Most Quebec production is south of the St. Lawrence River, but climate shifts and the lure of cheaper land are drawing more people further north. Rademacher said a handful of families in the Lac Saint-Jean area north of Quebec City have started planting maple trees on traditionally boreal forest land.
In Bryson’s area, a couple producers are looking to rent government land to add up to 60,000 taps. Another started this year with 25,000 taps and ambitions to double that in time. Bryson, meanwhile, is staying focused on being ready to tap when the weather dictates.
“It’s so unpredictable from one year to another,” he said. “Too hot is not good either. It really takes stable conditions to have that big production.”
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