Why Canada is unlocking its vault of maple syrup

Canada's maple syrup industry has become an international focus in recent days, with headlines shouting that the country has been forced to tap into its strategic reserve to make up for shortages.

Quebec produces about 73 per cent of the all maple syrup in the world. And the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (QMSP), an organization that governs the province's maple syrup producers, has said it will release about 22.7 million kilograms of maple syrup from its strategic reserve into the market by February.

For some, the headlines may have been an eye-opener that Canada even has a stockpile of maple syrup. CBC Explains the purpose of this reserve, why they had to be tapped into, and explores whether there was ever a shortage of maple syrup.

Quebec's maple syrup industry is subject to a supply-management system, meaning it employs a quota system run by the QMSP which dictates market volume. The QMSP also controls the Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve, which can hold more than 45 million kilograms of maple syrup. 

The reserve was created in 2000 to keep syrup in stock and ensure a constant supply for national and international markets, regardless of the size of the harvest, Hélène Normandin, a spokeswoman for QMSP told CBC's As It Happens. 

One site, the Laurierville Plant and Warehouse, in the Centre-du-Québec region, covers an area of 24,805 square metres – the equivalent of five football fields. That site alone can store 25 million kilograms of maple syrup, or 94,000 barrels.

When properly stored in barrels, maple syrup can last for many years, said Michael Farrell, the former director of Cornell University's Uihlein Forest, a maple syrup research and extension field station in Lake Placid, N.Y. 

In years when the yield is good, and more syrup is produced than needed, the extra can be sold to the QMSP and stored  "so that when there's bad years, you have enough to keep people stocked up with syrup on their pancakes," Farrell said. 

"Without this in reserve [this year], there would be much less syrup up on store shelves, and the price would be much higher."

In 2021, there was about 60 million kilograms of maple syrup produced, an average amount when compared to past years but down 18 million kilograms compared to 2020.

"It was an average season, not bad, but not as big as the two last seasons — 2019 and 2020 were just amazing, wonderful years of production," Normandin said.

However, worldwide demand has increased by more than 20 per cent — a spike industry experts believe was partly fuelled by more people cooking at home during the pandemic — and that has strained the supply

Not every year is a perfect year for every agricultural harvest. And this was one of those years which was not ideal in terms of maple syrup production, said Abby van den Berg, a research associate professor at the University of Vermont's Proctor Maple Research Center in Underhill, Vt.

Many places didn't have good weather for sap flow until later in the production season, she said.