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 about the industry’s unpredictability.
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.
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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 is studying the effects of climate change on syrup production.
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“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 late-spring ice storm depressed yields and triggered production losses for many producers, forcing the qmsp to tap into its much-vaunted “strategic reserve.”
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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 .
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