February 12 – BLiTZ. Warm winters pose a threat to the US maple syrup industry, Bloomberg reports. Due to global warming, manufacturers are forced to move to the northern regions. The Canadian industry, by contrast, can only benefit from this situation.
Canada and the northern United States are the world’s centers of maple syrup production, as sugar maples grow here. To obtain the juice used in the production of syrup, temperature fluctuations between minus and plus are necessary for a short time at the end of winter.
Warm conditions tend to reduce the sweetness of the tree sap, which increases the time it takes to make the syrup. Extreme weather conditions, such as drought or insect pests, can also significantly affect the amount of sap produced by maples.
In the US, growers are already taking action to accommodate maple trees’ earlier sap release and less predictable weather. They pay more attention to the health of the trees and use special vacuum pumps to pump out more sap.
The northern regions of Canada have great potential for maple syrup production in the future. According to Tim Rademacher, a researcher at the Quebec ACER Center, this potential could be ten times higher than it is now.
