Good season, bad omens for maple syrup industry
Climate change and other threats have producers fearing the future
Quebec's maple syrup makers are enjoying a bounce-back year in 2024 — but the industry's longterm future is anything but assured.
Rising temperatures, drier winters and such extreme weather events as ice storms run the risk of shortening crop seasons, depressing yields and generating new threats to forests, like the emergence of invasive insect species that were once largely absent from Quebec. In 2018, an infestation of forest tent caterpillars curbed syrup output in Ontario by 30 per cent and some producers worry similar calamities could become the norm in the not-too-distant future.
“The maple is a very resilient tree, but when you add up everything that's been happening in recent years — the lack of snow, the extreme weather, the invasive species that eat up the leaves — that starts to put the ecosystem in peril,” said Patrice Plouffe, who runs La Ferme du loup, a 6,000-tree maple farm in St-paulin, about 125 kilometres northeast of Montreal. “In a few years' time, maybe we won't have sugar shacks as we know them today.”
Fashion entrepreneur François Roberge, who also makes syrup in Lac-brome, shares some of Plouffe's concerns.
A January report by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, which calculated that global temperatures in 2023 were about 1.5 C warmer than in pre-industrial times, should serve as a warning, he says.
“There's a real risk that climate change is going to become a problem,” Roberge said. “I don't think we're at risk of losing our sugar production season, but I'm worried about climate change bringing in new illnesses. We all saw that global temperatures have risen by an average of 1.5 degrees. Who knows what's going to happen if they keep rising?
“Ultimately, it's Mother Nature that decides.”
Quebec syrup production is mostly confined to regions south of the St. Lawrence. They include Chaudière-appalaches, Montérégie, Bas-st-laurent and the Eastern Townships. That geographic dominance is under threat, said Tim Rademacher, an associate professor at the Institute of Temperate Forest Sciences at the Université du Québec en Outaouais. Rademacher studies effects of climate change on syrup production.
“There are bigger forces at play that are going to change where people can make syrup,” Rademacher said. “This shift is already underway. On the south shore of the St. Lawrence, the question to ask is how long we can keep making syrup.”
In the short term, “invasive species represent the biggest issue,” Rademacher said. “They can end production. If the trees die due to an insect or an illness of some sort, replacing them will require several generations.”
Syrup-making is a long-term endeavour. Maple trees can take up to 50 years to reach full maturity for production.
As far as Quebec's maple syrup producers' federation is concerned, it's too early to draw firm conclusions about the effect of climate change.
“Will climate change have a negative impact on production? We don't know yet,” Joël Vaudeville, a spokesperson for the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (QMSP), said in an interview. “If the bioclimatic zone starts shifting north due to global warming, this would create difficulties for the southernmost regions, but perhaps it would also create a new development potential in the north. Either way, this probably wouldn't happen before 50 to 100 years.”
That doomsday scenario still seems remote. Output in Quebec is on track this year to “substantially exceed” 2023's disappointing 124-million-pound tally, Vaudeville said. A year ago, a latespring ice storm depressed yields and triggered production losses for many producers, forcing the QMSP to tap into its much-vaunted “strategic reserve.”
“I've been making syrup for 17 years and this is shaping up to be my best-ever year,” said Roberge, who has quotas to tap about 8,000 trees. “In our line of work, there are good and bad years, and this will be a good one. We started boiling Feb. 9. I got a bit discouraged at the start of March when temperatures hit 15 degrees in Montreal, but things have recovered nicely since.”
What happens in Quebec is a big deal for maple syrup lovers worldwide because the province accounts for 90 per cent of Canadian production and almost three-quarters of global output. Quebec's hold on the market is so strong that observers sometimes refer to it as the Saudi Arabia of syrup.
Like many agricultural commodities, maple syrup is heavily dependent on weather conditions. Mother Nature's whims mean output can fluctuate from year to year.
The window for making syrup is short, usually covering about six weeks in the spring. Anecdotal evidence suggests that sugar season in Quebec now starts several weeks earlier than it did as little as 20 years ago, Rademacher said.
“It's not yet reflected in the scientific literature, but the trend is clear,” he said. “Most of the sugar shacks I've visited have marks on the walls to show when taps started flowing. When you look at old newspaper clippings, you see that sugar season used to start a lot later, sometimes in mid-march.”
To ensure optimal production conditions, temperatures must stay above freezing in daytime and below freezing at night for several days straight. If they rise too quickly, maple trees start budding, which makes the sap unfit for syrup making.
Last year's adverse weather conditions are a reason Quebec's maple syrup reserve shrank to 6.9 million pounds as of February, its lowest level since 2008. A year earlier, the reserve held 35 million pounds, Vaudeville said.
The QMSP created the strategic reserve in 2000 to ensure consistent supply to the markets, regardless of how successful crops were. When production outstrips demand, surplus syrup is pasteurized, canned and stored. Those quantities are released when harvests are poor.
Roberge was among the hundreds of producers who were granted extra quotas — known as “taps” — by the QMSP in January in a bid to replenish the reserve. Citing continually high demand for maple products and smaller inventories, the federation held a lottery to allocate seven million new taps. This followed the release of another seven million taps last May.
“Demand accelerated during the pandemic and the federation wants to rebuild inventories,” Roberge said. “The only way to increase the reserve is to increase the number of taps.”
Making syrup doesn't come cheap. It can cost up to $600,000 to buy about 3,000 taps and new equipment to start production, according to a 2023 study by Quebec researcher Jean-françois Drouin of the Centre d'études sur les coûts de production en agriculture.
Each tap generates about three pounds of syrup annually on average, the QMSP estimates. The federation represents the interests of 13,300 producers and more than 8,000 maple enterprises.
Where will these enterprises find the land they need to produce syrup in the future?
If climate change does force production to migrate north to regions such as Saguenay—lacst-jean, government intervention will be crucial. Many of the forests in northern Quebec are on public lands, which are often used by timber producers.
Public forests account for about 18 per cent of maple syrup production in Quebec, compared with 82 per cent for private lands, according to QMSP data. More and more syrup will be produced on public lands in the next decade, Vaudeville predicted.
For years now, the QMSP has been calling on the government to set aside 200,000 hectares of public forest for “sustainable, coexistable activities” such as maple syrup production. That would help safeguard the forest's future “for at least the next 50 years,” the federation said.
“The problem is that there are very few concessions available for
syrup making,” Rademacher said. “The industry would like to get more, but they're going up against the logging industry.”
Syrup producers argue that maple farms generate numerous benefits for the environment, such as reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. The QMSP values those benefits at about $1.6 billion a year.
In the meantime, some producers are already taking steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Replacing oil-fired evaporators that are used to boil off water and turn the sap into syrup with electric equipment would be more environmentally friendly, but small producers such as Plouffe say the cost can be prohibitive — as much as $200,000, by his estimate.
What's more, sugar shacks are rarely located near high-voltage power lines, which means additional expenses for producers looking to connect to Hydro- Québec's network.
“Economically speaking, it's unrealistic for someone like me to electrify,” Plouffe said.
He said that's why he's considering investing in a wood-fired stove, which would pollute less than an oil-fired variant. He is also careful to avoid overproduction, to plant companion trees regularly and to buy carbon credits to offset the emissions generated by syrup production.
“I could go hide under my bed and cry, but I prefer to act,” said Plouffe, who bought his sugar shack in 2005. “Climate change is frightening, but I'm doing everything I can at my level. I'm trying to adapt.”
Such innovations as shared boiling centres for producers of a given region could help the industry shift toward more environmentally friendly methods, Rademacher said.
“There are a lot of changes afoot in maple syrup production because producers are already feeling the consequences of climate change,” he said.
“It's more tangible and people are ready to adopt new technologies and electrify. They're motivated. How we cope with climate change collectively is going to determine whether our children or grandchildren can keep making syrup in the future.”