Why not? Clearcut and level the forests, they were pasture until the 1840s anyhow, make it all look like Quebec at its buttugliest.

As a former low level VT Dept of Agriculture gumby - who once recited each wide spot in the road settlement and th state's 3 "cities" to get to sleep - I object to this stoopid shit.

I love the concept, makes backyard syrup production reasonable and can be worked into current woodstands without disturbing the older growth.

phreddy wrote:

Why not?  The trees are planted for the sole purpose of producing syrup.  Is someone going to argue that taking advantage of the young trees is tantamount to raising calfs for veal?

Fuck no, just grow sugar water where economies of scale make it viable. Believe it or not, corporate plantation farming still thrives in large parts of the depopulated wastes between here and California.

In a natural forest, which varies in maple density, an average 60 to 100 taps per acre will yield 40 to 50 gallons of syrup. According to the researchers’ calculations, an acre of what is now called “the plantation method” could sustain 5,800 saplings with taps yielding 400 gallons of syrup per acre. If the method is realized, producing maple syrup on a commercial scale may no longer be restricted to those with forest land; it could require just 50 acres of arable land instead of 500 acres of forest. Furthermore, any region with the right climate for growing maples would be able to start up maple “farms”. The natural forest would become redundant.

The danger is in big corporate agriculture taking over all the production. How would a small family farm in Vermont even stay in business  competing with multi-thousand acre plantations on arable flat farmland in Michigan. Or even better yet, why invest in the USA a all, I bet an even better deal would be on 10 thousand acres of northern Chinese clearcut and a few hundred peasant laborers.

I cannot see this going the way of the boutique high end wine industry in CA. Where many small vanity vineyards can differentiate from the mass produced grape commodity. It took decades to differentiate CA wine as a distinctive product of sufficient quality. That would allow small vineyards in certain desirable geography to command value.

Just have to produce enough syrup to out compete the current market price setting by the Canuckocrats and the bottom should fall out of the maple market. And so will end the small family producer.

That should be enough to break up the cartel that controls 80% of the world's Maple Sugar market, The Federation of Quebec Maples Syrup Producers. Prices are high and stable now, but they were not till the Quebec Federation instituted price supports and their regulated buying program. But isn't that just anti market socialism? Don't Chinese corporate farms and fat cats at ag businesses have rights too?

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2014-01-23 14:50:01)