11 ms·

Canada taps into strategic reserves to deal with shortage of maple syrup

76 points by ajay-d 5y ago

colincooke 5y ago
Fun fact this reserve is actually run by Quebec, not the federal government of Canada. Additionally, this is also the reserve that was the victim of the largest hiest in Canadian history [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Heist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Hei...
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  There's also an episode of the Netflix series Dirty Money about the heist: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7909196/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7909196/
- 1over137 5y ago
  It's not run by Quebec either, as in, not by the government of Quebec. It's run by the syrup cartel.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Big Syrup strikes again.
rappatic 5y ago
This is a funny parallel to the U.S. oil reserve news recently. The Canadian maple syrup market is a fascinating one. I've read before that maple syrup farmers in Québec legally must sell their maple syrup through a central organization, so maple syrup smuggling by farmers into other provinces isn't unheard of. It's almost like a maple syrup mafia.
- Overtonwindow 5y ago
  There’s a great political satire novel by Peter Lefcourt called “The Woody” in which among many problems, a Vermont senator is being blackmailed by the Vermont mob which is the Vermont maple syrup distributors.
- db48x 5y ago
  Wait until you hear about the US National Raisin Reserve, which existed for 60 years before finally being recognized as unconstitutional.
  - ehsankia 5y ago
    Don't forget about the Government cheeeeese [0]? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese
    - gruez 5y ago
      That's not really the same thing. For maple syrup and raisins they're both government mandated supply controls, whereas government cheese is simply government buying up supply from farmers and providing a price floor.
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  "The OPEC of maple syrup" https://www.vpr.org/vpr-news/2018-03-08/quebecs-legal-maple-syrup-cartel-dictates-prices-for-vermont-maple-producers https://www.vpr.org/vpr-news/2018-03-08/quebecs-legal-maple-...
- refurb 5y ago
  It’s basically a cartel. But Canada does that with a lot of its agricultural products. Dairy is notorious for restricting supply to keep prices high. It’s why Canadians are shocked to see the price of cheese in the US. A block of Parmesan that costs $20USD might be $70CAD.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Thing is, this cartel has no legal standing. There’s nothing stopping a supermarket from selling Ontario or Vermont maple syrup. Quebec is ~70% of world production though, but it’s up to them and them only to control the price. Everyone else benefits without restricting supply. #2 exporter is Myanmar (? this must be a mistake). It’s kinda like OPEC losing its power as other countries up their production. (And every OPEC member cheating).
    - egberts1 5y ago
      Sugar maple, red maple, black maple. Acer genus, Section Rubra provides most of their sugar export in Northern Myanmar despite having their own Maple genus.
    - refurb 5y ago
      Without the cartel it would be a bunch of random producers selling in a competitive market. Now it’s a single seller of Quebec Maple Syrup and you have to buy through them. It looks like some exceptions (small producers). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Quebec_Maple_Syrup_Producers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Quebec_Maple_S...
      - Scoundreller 5y ago
        You have to buy through them if you want to buy Quebec maple syrup, but you can also buy any non-Quebec syrup you want. Even in Quebec. This is very unlike the other food cartels Canadians have a gun to their head to deal with.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Canada has lots of de-facto cartels, liquor, milk (and all derivatives, such as cheese), eggs, maple syrup, anything that makes money has a bunch of fat cats that you have to sell it to who will then create artificial scarcity and drive up the prices. There is no free market for many things in Canada. This is sad because the population is not exactly the wealthiest and these people are being fleeced.
  - newyankee 5y ago
    I thought Canada is one of the richest countries in the world with a robust system, plenty of natural resources and few people.
    - pomian 5y ago
      the country 's resources makes it one the richest countries in the world. That doesn't make the people rich. a few very wealthy companies though.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - Mikeb85 5y ago
      Some of those are true. But our governments are all shitshows (and all corrupt), there's oligopolies and cartels that run shit, one province is basically controlled by a single family, and the largest industry is a real estate ponzi scheme. Apart from that we're basically a petro-state pretending to be woke.
      - perl4ever 5y ago
        Some of the wealthiest US states also are rumored to be essentially run by organized crime. I can't say I'm aware they are especially bad places to live. I read something about how a certain famous politician who supposedly cleaned out the "X" mob was actually a tool of the "Y" mob taking over.
bushbaba 5y ago
Is there a maple syrup future or etf one can buy?
- perl4ever 5y ago
  It looks like you can buy a ~1 meter sugar maple tree for about 20 CAD. They are claimed to grow half a meter per year and reach a height of 30 meters. A tree is one of those forms of ur-capital that doesn't require any of the modern financial machinery, like wine in your cellar. But if you don't live in the right climate, well, maybe someone will put maple trees on the blockchain?
- jacquesm 5y ago
  You can buy a lot of Maple trees on St. Josephs island.
zaptheimpaler 5y ago
You know times are tough when Canada pulls out the emergency syrup stash
baskethead 5y ago
As a Canadian, I’ve had maple syrup less than a dozen times in my life. It plays no part of my life, or my families or friends. So the fact that it’s tied to Canada is strictly a foreign marketing thing I think. I actually have less association with maple syrup than I do with the clubbing of baby seals controversy which is zero as well. I get a kick out of seeing all the maple syrup products at YYZ or YVR but you never see those same products anywhere inside Canada. Something like Hockey is more genuinely a strong Canadian passion but maple syrup is practically nil except to the maple syrup producers.
- vaughnegut 5y ago
  Canada produces something like 70-80% of the world's maple syrup, and as the article says Quebec alone produces around 70% of the world's maple syrup. I imagine our flag combined with that most maple syrup people are consuming definitely give the impression people here are incredibly into maple syrup.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Say it aint so. Next, you'll tell me Canadians don't like beer, don't like hockey, and they aren't funny either.
- dheera 5y ago
  I do like the maple doughnuts at Tim Horton's though
- neom 5y ago
  Interesting, maple syrup is super popular where I'm from, I think it would be odd to not see maple syrup on a breakfast table in NWO.
  - cf100clunk 5y ago
    Some popular breakfast syrups are prohibited from being called "maple" as they don't contain any. If genuine maple syrup is super popular where you are, great for the Canadian producers.
yinzer-solomon 5y ago
I actually thought this thread was going to be about CIRA’s amazing set of Canadian stock photos, which includes references to the strategic maple syrup reserve: https://petapixel.com/2020/01/23/canadian-internet-authority-launches-free-stock-photo-library-full-of-funny-stereotypes/ https://petapixel.com/2020/01/23/canadian-internet-authority...
nayuki 5y ago
I hope the second photo ( https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/11/25/gettyimages-57204082-c4aa3dca27cc707ed68af63e88a866979fbb97f7-s1600-c85.webp https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/11/25/gettyimages-5720... ) doesn't suggest that sap is collected with leaded pipes.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  No, they're plastic vacuum tubing.
- mikequinlan 5y ago
  Leader is the name of the company that makes the spout. https://leaderevaporator.com/leader-5-16-hookless-spout/ https://leaderevaporator.com/leader-5-16-hookless-spout/
- egberts1 5y ago
  Aluminum.
throwawaysea 5y ago
It’s not a “strategic reserve” in the traditional sense. Typically a strategic reserve is a store held by a country to survive through difficult circumstances. The reserve here is basically overproduction from Quebec’s maple syrup cartel. There is a state government-granted monopoly to this cartel, which forces all syrup producers to only sell via the cartel, at amounts allocated to each producer by the cartel. Any excess is held in this reserve across various warehouses, and it is only sold in years of low production or unusual demand that exceeds production. I personally find the idea of this cartel really disagreeable. There’s a Netflix documentary series that covers the background here (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7909196/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7909196/), and the person running the cartel is basically an egotistic power hoarder whose family managed to steer the state government into implementing this cartel to the benefit of a few producers, which then forced every other producer to join in. Small farmers who want to operate outside the cartel cannot do so. The lady in the documentary tries to get around it by selling her small production to distributors from other states instead of the cartel, but the well-funded cartel uses their legal team to shut her down and basically drive her to financial ruin. One way to get around the cartel is to buy maple syrup from Vermont.
ljnelson 5y ago
What a masterful headline.
anm89 5y ago
I prefer Aunt Jemimah or Mrs Buttersworth to good, real, maple syrup. I really enjoy telling people because it just somehow seems to really annoy people. In almost every other category of food I go for high quality but with maple syrup the bottom of the barrel is the best.
- cf100clunk 5y ago
  That's quite an admission. In Canada you might get syruped and feathered! But seriously, those products cannot advertise as "maple syrup" so the comparison is an apples vs oranges one. The Aunt Jemima brand name has been replaced with the Pearl Milling Company brand name (a nod to history as that company created the original pancake mix that went on to great popularity).
  - anm89 5y ago
    I would consider getting syruped and feathered. Hopefully dowsed in the one with artificial butter flavor!

76 points by ajay-d 5y ago

Fun fact this reserve is actually run by Quebec, not the federal government of Canada. Additionally, this is also the reserve that was the victim of the largest hiest in Canadian history [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Heist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Hei...

actually_a_dog 5y ago
There's also an episode of the Netflix series Dirty Money about the heist: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7909196/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7909196/
1over137 5y ago
It's not run by Quebec either, as in, not by the government of Quebec. It's run by the syrup cartel.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Big Syrup strikes again.

rappatic 5y ago

This is a funny parallel to the U.S. oil reserve news recently. The Canadian maple syrup market is a fascinating one. I've read before that maple syrup farmers in Québec legally must sell their maple syrup through a central organization, so maple syrup smuggling by farmers into other provinces isn't unheard of. It's almost like a maple syrup mafia.

Overtonwindow 5y ago
There’s a great political satire novel by Peter Lefcourt called “The Woody” in which among many problems, a Vermont senator is being blackmailed by the Vermont mob which is the Vermont maple syrup distributors.
db48x 5y ago
Wait until you hear about the US National Raisin Reserve, which existed for 60 years before finally being recognized as unconstitutional.
- ehsankia 5y ago
  Don't forget about the Government cheeeeese [0]? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese
  - gruez 5y ago
    That's not really the same thing. For maple syrup and raisins they're both government mandated supply controls, whereas government cheese is simply government buying up supply from farmers and providing a price floor.
monkeybutton 5y ago
"The OPEC of maple syrup" https://www.vpr.org/vpr-news/2018-03-08/quebecs-legal-maple-syrup-cartel-dictates-prices-for-vermont-maple-producers https://www.vpr.org/vpr-news/2018-03-08/quebecs-legal-maple-...
refurb 5y ago
It’s basically a cartel. But Canada does that with a lot of its agricultural products. Dairy is notorious for restricting supply to keep prices high. It’s why Canadians are shocked to see the price of cheese in the US. A block of Parmesan that costs $20USD might be $70CAD.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Thing is, this cartel has no legal standing. There’s nothing stopping a supermarket from selling Ontario or Vermont maple syrup. Quebec is ~70% of world production though, but it’s up to them and them only to control the price. Everyone else benefits without restricting supply. #2 exporter is Myanmar (? this must be a mistake). It’s kinda like OPEC losing its power as other countries up their production. (And every OPEC member cheating).
  - egberts1 5y ago
    Sugar maple, red maple, black maple. Acer genus, Section Rubra provides most of their sugar export in Northern Myanmar despite having their own Maple genus.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Without the cartel it would be a bunch of random producers selling in a competitive market. Now it’s a single seller of Quebec Maple Syrup and you have to buy through them. It looks like some exceptions (small producers). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Quebec_Maple_Syrup_Producers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Quebec_Maple_S...
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      You have to buy through them if you want to buy Quebec maple syrup, but you can also buy any non-Quebec syrup you want. Even in Quebec. This is very unlike the other food cartels Canadians have a gun to their head to deal with.
jacquesm 5y ago
Canada has lots of de-facto cartels, liquor, milk (and all derivatives, such as cheese), eggs, maple syrup, anything that makes money has a bunch of fat cats that you have to sell it to who will then create artificial scarcity and drive up the prices. There is no free market for many things in Canada. This is sad because the population is not exactly the wealthiest and these people are being fleeced.
- newyankee 5y ago
  I thought Canada is one of the richest countries in the world with a robust system, plenty of natural resources and few people.
  - pomian 5y ago
    the country 's resources makes it one the richest countries in the world. That doesn't make the people rich. a few very wealthy companies though.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    Some of those are true. But our governments are all shitshows (and all corrupt), there's oligopolies and cartels that run shit, one province is basically controlled by a single family, and the largest industry is a real estate ponzi scheme. Apart from that we're basically a petro-state pretending to be woke.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      Some of the wealthiest US states also are rumored to be essentially run by organized crime. I can't say I'm aware they are especially bad places to live. I read something about how a certain famous politician who supposedly cleaned out the "X" mob was actually a tool of the "Y" mob taking over.

bushbaba 5y ago

Is there a maple syrup future or etf one can buy?

perl4ever 5y ago
It looks like you can buy a ~1 meter sugar maple tree for about 20 CAD. They are claimed to grow half a meter per year and reach a height of 30 meters. A tree is one of those forms of ur-capital that doesn't require any of the modern financial machinery, like wine in your cellar. But if you don't live in the right climate, well, maybe someone will put maple trees on the blockchain?
jacquesm 5y ago
You can buy a lot of Maple trees on St. Josephs island.

zaptheimpaler 5y ago

You know times are tough when Canada pulls out the emergency syrup stash

baskethead 5y ago

As a Canadian, I’ve had maple syrup less than a dozen times in my life. It plays no part of my life, or my families or friends. So the fact that it’s tied to Canada is strictly a foreign marketing thing I think. I actually have less association with maple syrup than I do with the clubbing of baby seals controversy which is zero as well. I get a kick out of seeing all the maple syrup products at YYZ or YVR but you never see those same products anywhere inside Canada. Something like Hockey is more genuinely a strong Canadian passion but maple syrup is practically nil except to the maple syrup producers.

vaughnegut 5y ago
Canada produces something like 70-80% of the world's maple syrup, and as the article says Quebec alone produces around 70% of the world's maple syrup. I imagine our flag combined with that most maple syrup people are consuming definitely give the impression people here are incredibly into maple syrup.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Say it aint so. Next, you'll tell me Canadians don't like beer, don't like hockey, and they aren't funny either.
dheera 5y ago
I do like the maple doughnuts at Tim Horton's though
neom 5y ago
Interesting, maple syrup is super popular where I'm from, I think it would be odd to not see maple syrup on a breakfast table in NWO.
- cf100clunk 5y ago
  Some popular breakfast syrups are prohibited from being called "maple" as they don't contain any. If genuine maple syrup is super popular where you are, great for the Canadian producers.

yinzer-solomon 5y ago

I actually thought this thread was going to be about CIRA’s amazing set of Canadian stock photos, which includes references to the strategic maple syrup reserve: https://petapixel.com/2020/01/23/canadian-internet-authority-launches-free-stock-photo-library-full-of-funny-stereotypes/ https://petapixel.com/2020/01/23/canadian-internet-authority...

nayuki 5y ago

I hope the second photo ( https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/11/25/gettyimages-57204082-c4aa3dca27cc707ed68af63e88a866979fbb97f7-s1600-c85.webp https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/11/25/gettyimages-5720... ) doesn't suggest that sap is collected with leaded pipes.

jacquesm 5y ago
No, they're plastic vacuum tubing.
mikequinlan 5y ago
Leader is the name of the company that makes the spout. https://leaderevaporator.com/leader-5-16-hookless-spout/ https://leaderevaporator.com/leader-5-16-hookless-spout/
egberts1 5y ago
Aluminum.

throwawaysea 5y ago

It’s not a “strategic reserve” in the traditional sense. Typically a strategic reserve is a store held by a country to survive through difficult circumstances. The reserve here is basically overproduction from Quebec’s maple syrup cartel. There is a state government-granted monopoly to this cartel, which forces all syrup producers to only sell via the cartel, at amounts allocated to each producer by the cartel. Any excess is held in this reserve across various warehouses, and it is only sold in years of low production or unusual demand that exceeds production. I personally find the idea of this cartel really disagreeable. There’s a Netflix documentary series that covers the background here (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7909196/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7909196/), and the person running the cartel is basically an egotistic power hoarder whose family managed to steer the state government into implementing this cartel to the benefit of a few producers, which then forced every other producer to join in. Small farmers who want to operate outside the cartel cannot do so. The lady in the documentary tries to get around it by selling her small production to distributors from other states instead of the cartel, but the well-funded cartel uses their legal team to shut her down and basically drive her to financial ruin. One way to get around the cartel is to buy maple syrup from Vermont.

ljnelson 5y ago

What a masterful headline.

anm89 5y ago

I prefer Aunt Jemimah or Mrs Buttersworth to good, real, maple syrup. I really enjoy telling people because it just somehow seems to really annoy people. In almost every other category of food I go for high quality but with maple syrup the bottom of the barrel is the best.

cf100clunk 5y ago
That's quite an admission. In Canada you might get syruped and feathered! But seriously, those products cannot advertise as "maple syrup" so the comparison is an apples vs oranges one. The Aunt Jemima brand name has been replaced with the Pearl Milling Company brand name (a nod to history as that company created the original pancake mix that went on to great popularity).
- anm89 5y ago
  I would consider getting syruped and feathered. Hopefully dowsed in the one with artificial butter flavor!