“There are some people holding or speculating, but most are holding for their own markets. They need syrup for fall foliage or some for Christmas for their stores. But I would say that ninety-five percent of the bulk syrup in the United States is gone. There are no complete loads now anywhere in the United States.”
Yet there would be plenty of supply available, thanks to the Canadians. “The real cold areas made a lot of syrup during that cold spell when we were done,” Bruce said. “Everybody stopped here around March twenty, gave up the ghost and pulled the spouts, but up north a couple hundred miles they waited it out and made quite a lot of syrup.
“We had the worst sugaring season I’ve ever seen. We broke records in the middle of March and then we were done by March twenty. There have been years when we haven’t made hardly any syrup until March twenty, but this year we were totally done. The season basically lasted ten days. I don’t know anybody who has documented a sugar season that’s as bad. It got up to seventy and eighty degrees for almost three weeks. In the middle of March the tadpoles were out in the pond in front of the sugarhouse. They don’t usually come out until the fifteenth to the twentieth of April, but this time they were out on the twentieth of March. And then we had that real cold spell, and it did them all in.”
The USDA report was issued a week after Bruce and I talked. The maple syrup crop in the United States in 2012 was 20,988,000 pounds, or 1,908,000 gallons. Bruce’s prediction wasn’t so far off after all, and perhaps it was only the expansion in the United States that caused him to underestimate by a million pounds. The report from the Federation followed. The crop in Quebec was 96,110,000 pounds, made by 7400 producers.
I ALSO VISITED David Marvin in June, and we walked in the sugarbush at Butternut Mountain. Production at David’s sugarhouse was consistent with that of northern Vermont. After shutting down during the hot weather, when they had dumped sap because it looked like cottage cheese, they began producing again on April 4 after the weather turned cold. The syrup lightened and then darkened again. Butternut Mountain produced nearly 4000 gallons.
Technology had accommodated them, and what David suspected turned out to be true: “We learned things about how to adjust to temperature and that we can have sap runs on temperature differentials with high vacuum.” But there were limitations. “Technology won’t overcome warm nights in the middle of the season,” he said. Warm nights caused the buds to develop, and when the buds swelled, the sap turned buddy. In David’s experience in 2012, every barrel produced after March 19 had a buddy flavor.
“Everything?” I asked.
“Everything. There was a lot of buddy syrup, and now we have to decide what to do with that. In the future, when we have these warm periods, we will have to find markets for buddy syrup.” One way to use it was to make sugar, as the buddy flavor disappeared during the process, but the dry sugar market could not absorb all the buddy syrup in 2012.
David also had concerns about expansion in the industry. “I’ve heard of an investor who wants to buy a three-million-dollar property in northern Vermont and have a hundred-thousand tap operation in which he will haul sap sixty miles over a mountain. That tells me the industry is expanding.” Which meant that they needed more markets. “You can say you’ll increase the markets, but the markets should be increased first.”
Interest in sugaring hadn’t diminished. “What is it that they say about farmers: when the going gets tough, the tough get growing? Capital is going into maple. Dairy farmers and others are investing. It’s a bright spot.”
David laughed at the irony that, from his perspective, “This was a perfect season. If it was another big year, there would have been too much syrup and a downward pressure on prices.” He would have bought the total crops from all of his 375 producers, and they too were expanding.
Of course, David was expanding too. His new building was nearing completion. While we walked up the road in the sugarbush, by the Cherry Corner and by the boulder where there were brick fragments from an arch of a century ago, David said Bruce was no longer in the second tier, that he was at the level of Maple Grove.
“And we will soon be too,” David said.
DURING THE SUMMER of 2012 events were taking place that made the maple syrup industry a world story. Those stories didn’t break until the end of the year, with the arrests of suspects in Canada for the theft of 6 million pounds of syrup from a Federation warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, north of Montreal. The Federation had been renting the warehouse to store surplus from the 2011 crop while they built a third facility of their own.
The discovery of the theft was made on July 30, when an auditor hired to examine the supply found empty barrels and barrels filled with water. The Federation reported the theft to the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police, and a wide investigation followed, with interviews of nearly 300 people, tracing the syrup to companies in Quebec, New Brunswick, Ontario, and the United States.
The investigation led to a company named SK Export in Kedgwick, New Brunswick. A sugarmaker named Etienne St. Pierre had started the business in 2002 and focused his marketing plan on Quebec syrup, believing that the Federation rules didn’t apply to him in New Brunswick. He ran advertisements in Quebec, promising confidentiality. In the beginning he sold primarily to Maple Grove, later branching out to other companies, including Bascom’s. The Federation had been battling with St. Pierre over the years, running undercover investigations and demanding that he pay damages, but he had ignored them.
Most of the stories played upon the surprising fact that there was such a thing as a global strategic reserve for maple syrup. The word “cartel” was often used, with comparisons to OPEC, pointing out that a barrel of maple syrup was worth more than a barrel of oil. The stories described sticky-fingered thieves and hot syrup. A hilarious story aired on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a comic sketch that likened the Federation to a drug cartel and maple syrup to cocaine—an innocent reporter tried maple syrup, despite his reservations, then followed a path of addiction and crime, stooping even to sucking sap out of tapholes, so hopelessly caught up in the pursuit of syrup that he missed getting the big story.
A story with some equally funny but true moments appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek under the title, “The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist.” This story, written by Brendan Borrell, described the dispute between Etienne St. Pierre and the Federation and how St. Pierre’s salty assistant, Julienne Bosse, took a more confrontational approach than merely ignoring demands: “She scribbled her response on a subpoena and faxed it back to the Federation. ‘F—you gang of A-holes,’ she wrote. ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! . . . We will keep buying maple syrup forever.’” In another communication, after the Federation used a wrong address for SK Export, she corrected them by writing, “7348 Rue Funck You.” When officers from the Sûreté du Québec arrived in September 2012 with a search warrant, Bosse “pretended to wipe her derriere with it, gave the police the bird, and locked the side door.” This loyal employee grabbed the keys to the warehouse from St. Pierre and “tucked them into her ample bosom.” All this, Borrell wrote, while also making chocolate maple leaves and “melt-in-your-mouth maple meringues for sale in the gift shop.”
Later that day, after a visit to a judge, according to Borrell, police pried open the warehouse doors and found a million dollars worth of syrup. Everything was seized the following day, including St. Pierre’s forklift and his list of suppliers and customers. He told police that many of the barrels came from a man named Richard Vallieres, “one of Quebec’s most notorious ‘barrel rollers,’ an unauthorized middleman who ran afoul of the Federation in the past and paid thousands of dollars in fines.” On December 18 Vallieres was arrested and charged with conspiring with five others to steal the syrup. In all, twenty-two suspects were charged, including St. Pierre.
The story went on to say a Quebec television station reported that “at least 70 truckloads of stolen syrup have already made it to three distributors in the U.S., including Bascom Maple Farms in
New Hampshire, one of St. Pierre’s clients and the largest maple supplier in the U.S. Bruce Bascom says he fully cooperated with the Sûreté du Québec and they have ended their inquiries, but he declined to answer whether the company had purchased any stolen syrup. Two Vermont companies that reportedly purchased the syrup, Maple Grove Farms and Highland Sugarworks, did not respond to requests for interviews.”
Many other news stories reported the arrests, including the arrest of a man named Stephan Darveau, who sold syrup to Highland Sugarworks and to Bruce Bascom.
After reading the Bloomberg Businessweek story in January I went to talk with Bruce. He was about to leave for the maple conference in Verona, and Sam and David were waiting in the car, but Bruce talked for a little while. He said that during the summer the Sûreté du Québec came to speak with him, along with an official from Homeland Security, because the syrup crossed the international border. “I bought a lot of syrup from Darveau,” Bruce said, “but I had no idea it was stolen syrup. Darveau said he didn’t know, either.” He said he also bought syrup from SK Export.
“Maple Grove had loads that they have to return or are contesting returning. Highland has some too. But we don’t have any. It’s been sold. All that syrup is in people’s stomachs.”
Regarding Bruce’s statement about Maple Grove, on May 2, 2013, the Montreal Gazette reported that the Sûreté du Québec and Vermont police visited the Maple Grove factory with search warrants on October 19, 2012. Maple Grove allegedly purchased multiple truckloads of stolen syrup. According to the report the company representative confirmed that the firm had bought syrup from Richard Vallieres in the summer of 2012 at a price “substantially below normal rates” as set out by the Quebec Federation of Maple Syrup Producers. Maple Grove later issued a statement that they had “purchased the syrup in good faith and had no reason to believe that it was coming from Quebec or that it may have been stolen. The prices paid were consistent with normal commercial prices for maple syrup purchased from sources outside of Quebec.”
I soon left for South America for a few months to teach at a university. Bruce later informed me by e-mail that when the authorities had come to talk with him, “I gave them a tour, and no Darveau syrup existed in my inventory at that time. Within a couple of weeks my law firm in Montreal received a note from the Quebec police thanking me for our cooperation and saying that, as far as they were concerned, all inquiries had ended.”
Regarding the Darveau syrup, Bruce wrote that he purchased syrup from a Vermont corporation called ESD-LLC, owned by Stephan Darveau, of Sherbrooke, Quebec. Bruce had paid by wire to a Vermont bank, and the syrup was delivered. “I was told many times that the money received by ESD in Vermont was paid to an Ontario company, which in turn purchased the syrup from Ontario and New Brunswick producers and syrup dealers. I was rather far removed from the initial purchase, being the third or fourth hand to the first transaction.”
In May 2013 Bruce received an e-mail from his lawyer in Montreal that there had been a determination that the stolen syrup had not been sold at a significantly lower price in the United States, and this meant those buyers could not be held criminally responsible. Investigations were ongoing. Trials were expected to take place in 2014.
I also called David Marvin after reading the Bloomsberg Businessweek story. Marvin was also about to leave for the Verona conference and would be giving the keynote speech. He was planning to talk about expansion and to make the recommendation that producers make the effort to promote pure maple syrup in the cause against artificial (“that way we all win”). He intended to talk about the Federation pricing scheme, which he thought unsustainable. He also wanted to say something about the stolen syrup and how, in his opinion, it may have affected prices on the market. He had seen bids that he thought were completely unprofitable, and now he thought he knew the basis for them. “In the past when you talked about black-market syrup, everyone was skeptical. With stolen, it’s a whole different perspective.”
David thought the discovery of the thefts could ultimately be a positive development, because government authorities would now be looking more closely.
When I called Steve Jones he agreed. Jones had been on the advisory board of the Federation when he was a vice president at Maple Grove. “This will weed those people out,” he said. “It will make anyone nervous who is wanting to play in the black market. Now, with the thefts, the full force of the Quebec authorities has come into play. And the border patrol.”
David Marvin was rankled by all the funny stories, saying, “We look like buffoons, with all the silly jokes. Cartel, sticky situation, hot syrup. I say to everyone, let me tell you about it. It’s not a joke.”
The story in Bloomberg Businessweek came to a climax with questions about the Federation and whether it would survive in the long term. It noted that in 2008 Quebec claimed eighty percent of world maple syrup production, but that in 2011 its share had dropped to seventy-one percent, “as U.S. states and Canadian provinces without quotas have risen to supply cheaper syrup.” The story mentioned that Senator Charles Schumer had inserted a provision in the Farm Bill to provide grants to farmers to promote the industry—New York had 280 million tappable trees, three times more than Quebec. Simon Trepanier, acting director of the Federation, and others were watching closely. ‘“We are not idiots,’ he says, adding that in his mind climate change ultimately will tip the syrup scales in favor of his countrymen.”
He may be right. A few months later, on May 9, 2013, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere crossed the threshold of 400 parts per million throughout an entire day for the very first time. The reading was taken at the NASA observatory in Mauna Loa, Hawaii. This promised to be a dangerous threshold, with warmer temperatures, greater storms, higher sea levels, and global disruption on the not-so-distant horizon. According to reports, 400 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had not been achieved since the Pliocene epoch, 3 million years ago, when temperatures had been three to five degrees warmer and sea levels sixty to eighty feet higher.
During the summer of 2013, when leaf cover in North American forests extracted 10 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere, levels of carbon would fall below 400 parts per million, but that would be the final time, some reports stated.
That was, of course, unless governments took action to reduce the use of coal and fossil fuels and promote the development of clean technologies, but so far the world’s governments, especially the US government, in the country most responsible for the rise in the level of atmospheric carbon, had refused to take necessary action. It seemed highly unlikely they would, even though economic disruptions promised to be far greater later on if they didn’t.
Maybe the maple syrup industry can speak for the rest of the country, to the rest of the country, for it is a bellwether, this earliest of agricultural traditions, the first to be taught to settlers by Native Americans, this pursuit that relies on sensitive fluctuations in temperature, as the sun advances north and the trees freeze by night.
POSTSCRIPT
THE WINTER OF 2013 was a cold winter, more like that of 2011. The crop report for maple syrup issued by the USDA in June 2013 listed production nationwide at 3.25 million gallons, 35,750,000 pounds, an increase of seventy percent over 2012. The state of Vermont produced forty percent of that crop.
Bruce Bascom said the US crop was the greatest in over seventy-five years. He thought the crop was underreported and was possibly as much as twenty-five percent greater.
The number of taps was up in every region except for Maine, which remained the same.
According to the USDA the average season in the northeastern region lasted about two weeks longer than it had in 2012.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I FEEL LUCKY that the kind of writing I do puts me in touch with such admirable people and worthy endeavors. I know I will miss mentioning some of the names of the people who talked to me during these three years of research, and I apologize for that. I had many conversat
ions in passing in many places, often with people who didn’t know what I was up to. My thanks and gratitude to all of those who informed me along the way about sugarmaking, about the life of trees, about weather and climate and many facets of the business of making maple syrup.
I thank Bruce Bascom first, for his openness and willingness to talk, going all the way back to our first phone call about the Asian longhorned beetle, which didn’t play a large role in this book but did open up the doorway to a conversation with Bruce about the maple syrup business. Bruce spent hundreds of hours with me, traveling and talking at the sugarhouse and in formal interviews. He also sent me to and advised me to talk with all the right people, under the belief that there is much more to the maple syrup industry than people realize.
Thank you also to Kevin Bascom for his explanations of the processes and for time in the woods. Thank you to David Bascom for letting me ride along and for answering my questions.
I owe Peter and Deb Rhoades a special thank you for the many times you hosted us and talked with us about making syrup, for the time spent at your remarkable sugarhouse, and for those times spent in the woods, which was my secret reason for writing this book.
Thank you to David Marvin for the many walks in the woods and times at the sugarhouse and at the plant in Morrisville and for informing me and answering my many questions in person and by e-mail and phone. You are a dedicated and passionate spokesman for the cause of all things maple.
A special thanks to Alvin Clark, who became my friend in the course of this research, beginning with our trip to the opening of the “Seasons of Change” exhibit and during the many other things we did together, including, especially, times at your sugarhouse.
My thanks also to Dr. Timothy Perkins, director of the Proctor Maple Center, with whom I had several conversations, who hosted me at the Proctor Center, who sent documents, and who answered my many questions, and from whom I also learned a great deal via his public talks to sugarmakers. Though he doesn’t appear directly in these pages, his contributions inform this book.
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