Sustainable Winter Food: Maple Syrup

by Katherine Gustafson · 2010-01-02 06:00:00 UTC
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There's nothing quite like a piping-hot stack of pancakes topped with maple syrup on a wintry morning. And I mean real syrup, the stuff made from sap tapped from a sugar maple, not the corn-syrup-sweetened candy that comes in a plastic bottle shaped like a person.

Not only is it good to eat, it's good for the Earth. The maple sugar industry, centered in Northern New England and Quebec, Canada, is inherently sustainable. Tapping trees does not damage them, and the profitability of their continued health is motivation for preservation of sugar-bearing forests. Linking forest protection to economic benefit helps maintain carbon sinks to combat climate change.

Climate change, in fact, is of increasing concern to the sugar industry. In 2007, The New York Times reported that warmer winters were disrupting the flow of sap. The yield in 2008 was the lowest in 40 years, even worse than the dismal year before, according to the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers. "Global Maple Sugar Crisis!" The Gothamist hollered.

Quebec sugar producers reacted by upping their production limits and quotas and adding more producers to their rolls. US producers increased the number of taps; New York, for example, upped its taps by 4 percent (PDF) in 2009.

The weather cooperated, and 2009 ended up being the most productive sugar year in decades — the US hasn't had such a good year since 1944. "Maple syrup-makers strike gold," trumpeted USA TODAY. However, the sap's sugar content was relatively paltry, so that around 44 gallons of sap — instead of the average 43 — were needed to create a gallon of syrup, according to the USDA (PDF).

So is the industry in peril from a warming climate or is the booming 2009 season an indication that sugar maples are not so easily confounded? Seeing as how a major hallmark of climate change is disruption of weather patterns, and, as Canada's CBC News reminds us, "weather is a crucial factor in the production of maple syrup," I bet there's more trouble to come.

According to Canada's EnviroZine, the sugar maple's range is already shifting north, causing changes in the productivity of more southern forests. EnviroZine spells out the hard truth: "environmental changes could threaten the long-term sustainability of the sugar maple industry in Canada and spell its demise in the United States."

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng

Katherine Gustafson is a freelance writer and editor with a background in international nonprofit organizations.
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