Pancake lovers, fear not. Strong demand for maple syrup after a poor Canadian harvest has created supply-side woes, but Quebec province is tapping its strategic reserves to keep the world awash in the sweet, sticky stuff.
Experts are warning the shortages could be further compounded by climate change, which is already being blamed for last spring’s shorter and warmer sugaring season.
“It’s normal, that’s what we want: The reserves must be the buffer between temperature, demand and production,” explained the organization’s president Serge Beaulieu.
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The group’s massive reserves in the town of Laurierville, near Quebec City, are emblematic of Canada’s hugely lucrative maple syrup industry.
In Canada, maple syrup is serious business. Often called “Quebec gold” in the region, it sometimes has been treated more like gold itself.
At present, however, the only siphoning is to relieve market shortages: At the start of the year, some 105 million pounds were stored here. The stockpile has since been whittled down to only 37 million pounds.
The sap harvest usually starts in March, when temperatures are above freezing during the day but below zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight.
Producer Laurie Larouche, 23, lamented to AFP that “last spring was cut short because it got hotter faster than usual so instead of having a good month of harvest we had perhaps only two weeks plus a few days here and there.”
The province’s total yield fell to 133 million pounds of maple syrup, about 20-40 pounds less than in four of the previous five years, according to the producer cartel’s data, and far short of the 175 million pounds sold in 2020.
Meanwhile, sales have doubled over the past decade, including a 20 percent jump in just the first six months of 2021 compared to the same period the previous year.
The pandemic is partly to blame for the recent surge in demand, Beaulieu said.
And, he added, syrup is increasingly replacing white sugar because it “is better for your health than refined sugar.”
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