Pancake lovers, fear not. Strong demand for maple syrup after a poor Canadian harvest has created supply-side woes, but Quebec province is tapping its strategic reserves to keep the world awash in the sweet, sticky stuff.
Experts are warning the shortages could be further compounded by climate change, which is already being blamed for last spring's shorter and warmer sugaring season.
Quebec makes almost three-quarters of the world's supply, and the organization -- sometimes called the OPEC of maple syrup -- represents more than 11,000 producers. In Canada, maple syrup is serious business. Often called "Quebec gold" in the region, it sometimes has been treated more like gold itself.
Harvesters traditionally hammered spiles into tree trunks and let the sap drip into buckets, but now collect it from multiple trees at once through a system of tubing, for refining.Producer Laurie Larouche, 23, lamented to AFP that "last spring was cut short because it got hotter faster than usual so instead of having a good month of harvest we had perhaps only two weeks plus a few days here and there.
Researchers at the Quebec Ministry of Forests have concluded that the yield per maple tree could fall by as much as 15 percent by 2050, due mostly to increasingly warm weather in the month of April.
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