Maple season is arriving in New England; demand for natural syrup has turned cottage industry into a big business

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Vermont Gov. Phil
Scott, flanked by Vermont "Maple Ambassadors" Mark Turco
Jr. and Michelle Poulin, tap a maple. It's still too cold to tap
trees for sap in northern New England. (Maple News)

The business of tapping maple trees for their sap, and using it to make a sugary syrup, has become big business, thanks to increasing demand for natural syrup. Not long ago, "sugaring" was "largely a sideline for dairy and small-scale farmers that fell at a nice spot on the calendar. Now it's become virtually industrialized" with state-of-the-art technology and continues expansion, reports former New Hampshire agriculture commissioner Steve Taylor, who was long among the tree-tappers.

"Operations that once had 2,500 taps may now have 35,000; Somerset County in northwestern Maine has recently seen new operations spring up with 100,000 or more taps, often run by Quebecers who want to get around the provincial quota system," Taylor writes in an email to The Rural Blog. "So the industry is now headed in the same direction as dairy, with production outstripping demand and brokers and other bulk purchasers carrying over inventory from last season and imposing limits on what producers can bring them. The bulk price five years ago hovered close to $3 per pound, now it has settled at below $2." A gallon weighs 11 pounds.

Perdue listens as Kevin Harrison of Georgia Mountain Maples
 explains the workings of his processing system. (Maple News)

Another indication of the industry's size may have been last week's visit by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to "160,000-tap Georgia Mountain Maples, tapping the ceremonial first tree of the 2019 maple season with Vermont Gov. Phil Scott and a group of second graders from a nearby school. It was the first known visit of a sugarhouse by a U.S. agriculture secretary in modern history," Peter Gregg reports for Maple News, a trade journal he started a few years ago – itself another indication of the industry's growth.

Bruce Bascom of Bascom Maple Farms, New Hampshire's top producer, also sells supplies and equipment, and told The Rural Blog that part of the business has reached "a soft spot" due to low prices. "People invested in maple for a lot of emotional and irrational reasons," he said, but the number of taps keeps growing 7 to 10 percent a year as consumption is goes up about 7 percent annually, and he voiced confidence: "In the next 12 to 15 years, the industry's gonna double again." He said it has been boosted by heavy promotion from the Quebec industry and a growing desire of U.S. consumers for natural syrup rather than the "chemical concoctions" sold under popular brands.