Canada's maple syrup reserve hits 16-year low

[steve918]

The thing is the production was already artificially limited by the government. So as the article says one way to increase production is just to allow for additional production.

[486sx33]

I was going to comment that - supply is already “managed”.

[Retric]

I always thought the reserve was odd, but it's for buyers not producers. 2019 and 2020 where record years and now their down to 6.9 million out of 133 million lb, with that kind of variability it seems like a good idea.

[lupusreal]

The reserve buys from producers though, right? If the reserve buys from producers during highly productive years, that prevents the price of syrup from falling too much. It seems to serve both producers and buyers.

[gwern]

No, it doesn't. Maple syrup is a minor luxury, easily substituted by other things like jam or honey. Consumers are better off with lower average syrup prices, not propped up by a government cartel, even if those prices have somewhat higher variance: when the price is high, people just substitute away and eat less maple syrup, no big deal. (It's not a necessity like air or water or housing.) If the variance is a big deal for various commercial players like IHOP, then they can just deal with producers directly or someone can set up a futures market, like everything else.

[blakesterz]

This reminded me of The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, Over the course of several months between 2011 and 2012, the contents of 9,571 barrels, valued at C$18.7M, were stolen in a suspected insider job from a FPAQ facility in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, Quebec.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/great-cana...

[shagie]

An Illustrated Account of the Great Maple Syrup Heist - https://web.archive.org/web/20160304095051/http://modernfarm... (the original is now a mess of broken image links)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10367590 (140 points by DrScump on Oct 11, 2015 | 61 comments )

[ChrisArchitect]

Was gonna say, I wonder whatever happened to the chance they were going to make an actual movie about that, but it ended up maybe down the line it's just going to be a comedy show.

https://deadline.com/2022/04/great-canadian-maple-syrup-heis...

[spelunker]

This was covered in an episode in a Netflix series (Dirty Money maybe?) and was fascinating. And amusing of course!

[ChrisArchitect]

Related Canadian source:

Canada's maple syrup reserve almost empty as sap season at risk of becoming another casualty of the winter that wasn't

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/canadas-maple-syrup-reserve...

[cmcconomy]

weird.. I was at a sugar shack west of montreal a few weeks ago and he said this year was one of the longest and most productive in some time.

[pluc]

This week in the news literally was reporting a record season. Don't know about ROC but QC has been freezing/thawing for weeks, which is great for the production.

[specialp]

I have tapped my own trees and doubt this is due to climate change. In fact more warm days would probably increase production. The days when you get the best and most sap is when there is a cold night (sub freezing) followed by a warm day. Warming would push this earlier in the season but it would still happen. The only way production would be halted or impacted significantly would be if we stopped having sub freezing nights the entire winter. Sap after the trees bud for the spring is less desirable as it has a stronger flavor.

[hnburnsy]

Olive Oil Chocolate and now maple syrup.

Feels like every niche product is having some random supply "issue" just to sock it to consumers.

Waiting for the cereral industry to blame the Key Bridge collapse for a rise in Captain Crunch prices.

[xandrius]

So this happened already in 2008 and no major systemic issue driving this. So why do we have this article?

It's not like it is the lowest in 100 years or something.

[bregma]

What a load of crap.

We tapped our trees a couple of weeks early this year and had just about normal production levels. It just seems to have stopped a couple weeks earlier than usual because of a cold spell and an awful lot of cloud cover but there's still a couple weeks left before the peepers come out and we pull all the spiles.

Then again where I live we have no government regulation of the syrup industry. You can sell everything you can produce. Then again, I'm not in Quebec and Quebec is not the same as Canada.

[tredre3]

Quebec's maple syrup is indeed controlled by a cartel and the traditional supply/demand rules are meaningless, it's just market manipulation. Same with cow milk. But both BC and Ontario operate the same way, so I'm not sure why you're implying that quebec is the outlier here, seems like wherever you live might be...

[jajko]

For a remote outsider - is the divide between quebec and rest of canada not just a language one?

[HankB99]

> What a load of crap.

> We tapped our trees ... and had just about normal production levels.

That makes me wonder if the cartel is priming the pump for a price increase. Perhaps there will be another "great maple syrup heist" resulting in a shortage and skyrocketing price.

[TheMagicHorsey]

Talk about useless government nonsense. If we need a strategic reserve for Maple Syrup, then why not strategic reserves for everything else? Why not one for sugar, playstations, shoes, jockstrap itch cream, etc. I'd rather go without my breakfast syrup than suffer jock itch with no remedy ... right?

There is some special interest at play here. Nonsensical.

[thrill]

Damn it Canada, you had one job - protect the maple syrup!

[martinbaun]

Maple Syrup reserve?

I can't believe there's a maple syrup reserve hehe

[Oarch]

Quick, fetch my smelling salts. I feel faint.

[madduci]

Artificial scarcity to drive prices higher?

[guyzero]

It's less artificial scarcity than production management to ensure consistent high prices. Lost of Canadian agricultural sectors have quotas to keep prices high to ensure domestic supply and are a de facto subsidy to farmers. Dairy, poultry, maple syrup. Plus import controls on these same products.

The system is divisive but it does what it was intended to do - keep Canadian farmers in business by charging domestic consumers more.

[josephjrobison]

If jokes are allowed on HN still…this is Canada’s version of the U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve right?

[Waterluvian]

Kind of. It's not a national security strategic reserve but rather an economic one. It helps ensure a stable supply so that prices don't skyrocket, particularly as the annual harvest of maple syrup is very hard to predict: it depends heavily on freeze/thaw patterns in the spring.

The argument, I think, is that if prices are unreliable, customers are turned off from the product and develop new habits that exclude maple syrup. Without it, maple syrup prices would have been ridiculous these past couple years.

It's also how we avoid having to annex Vermont.

[dehrmann]

Nah. It's more like their version of the US strategic cheese reserve.

[tshaddox]

Fairly similar, although the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is more about keeping the United States economy stable in the midst of global supply disruptions (particularly discouraging foreign nations who might like to pressure the United States with embargoes), while the FPAQ maple syrup reserve is more about keeping the maple syrup industry financially stable from year to year.

[CydeWeys]

It's not a joke. This is a strategic reserve for them.

[zeteo]

Americans will soon be encouraged to switch to electric pancakes.