The world has discovered Canada’s maple syrup and Quebec production is slated to double — with a bit of help from climate change

These are boom times for most maple syrup farmers. But harvesting this quintessential Canadian product has never been more challenging.

International demand for maple syrup, world production of which is concentrated in eastern North America, has never been higher.

The $2-billion industry is diversifying its product range to include everything from liqueurs (Mappleau) to energy drinks for endurance athletes.

And two of the industry’s largest companies, both based in Quebec, which accounts for more than 70 per cent of global production, have been acquired in recent years by big food conglomerates.

At the same time, however, climate change is disrupting the maple syrup industry, making winners of some syrup-producing regions while threatening to reduce the output of others.

Warming winters caused by climate change favour Canadian producers, who by some estimates have the potential to increase their output as much as tenfold in coming years.

Production is expected to double in Quebec in the next few years, and to increase significantly in Ontario and the Maritimes.

That said, Quebec production is beginning to relocate northward from its traditional concentration in the Eastern Townships. And it won’t be long before farmers on the fringes of the GTA are tempted to follow suit.

Meanwhile, U.S. production, which extends as far south as Virginia and Kentucky, is expected to eventually decline due to increasingly mild winters.

But global warming is not an unalloyed blessing for the approximately 8,000 maple syrup farmers in Quebec alone.

Higher winter temperatures reduce the sweetness of tree sap. That requires more sap production to achieve ideal sweetness. It will mean a change in the current ratio of 40 litres of sap to produce one litre of maple syrup.

Mild winters also reduce the sap run, or total output of each tree.

Many farmers entirely dedicated to maple syrup production will increase their count of trees, and give them maximum access to soil nutrients by removing non-maples, or “thinning out” their maple stands.

They might also turn to red maples, though they don’t produce as sweet a sap as sugar maples.

Those options aren’t as readily available to the many maple-syrup farmers for whom maple harvesting is a sideline.

Warmer winters also provide less snow cover, exposing the roots of trees to rot and attacks by pests.

And weakened trees, in turn, are more vulnerable to damage from the increased number and severity of storms caused by climate crisis.

Maple syrup harvesting is a delicate process. It requires farmers to calculate the exact time — a roughly six-week “window” — when temperatures quickly swing from freezing to thawing.

It’s only in that short period that the sap runs.

In Quebec, farmers must use more than 50 million tree taps to collect each year’s sap yield during the brief time the sap is running.

Climate change has played havoc with the timing of the harvest.

As you read this, many maple farmers are completing their harvest.

That is an abrupt change from the centuries-long tradition of beginning the harvest in mid-March. If a maple farmer today waited until the traditional March 15 commencement of the harvest, he or she would risk missing much or all the season.

That shift of the maple harvest season, so that it now ends in many growing regions when it used to begin, is one of the more visible impacts of climate change.

And that shift has occurred rapidly, in the past two decades.

That is a blink of the eye in the span of time since the late 1700s when the Indigenous Peoples of eastern North America first taught European newcomers how to turn sap from maple trees into syrup.

Maple syrup crop yields are increasingly unpredictable.

In 2021, a 23 per cent spike in demand coincided with a 21 per cent drop in Canadian production due to adverse weather conditions.

But a bumper crop just one year later enabled the industry to meet a 20 per cent increase in both sales and exports over the previous two years.

The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (QMSP), an OPEC-like cartel of farmers that maintains supply and price stability in the industry, expects to welcome more than 1,000 new member-farmers by next year.

That’s an assurance that the industry will keep up with growing demand. So is the increased use by farmers of specialized vacuum pumps to draw more sap from trees and sanitized plastic tubing that prevents sap contamination by microorganisms during periods of warmer temperatures.

As noted, demand is likely to keep increasing as the industry expands its product range. It already includes maple-flavoured wine and craft beers, confections and biscuits.

And the appealing taste of maple power drinks “coupled with the low quality of products currently in the marketplace, creates an opportunity for a superior, maple-based product,” says researcher Aaron Wightman of Cornell University, which is developing several maple-based food products.

Climate change willing, the industry will be able to realize that potential.

David Olive is a Toronto-based business columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @TheGrtRecession