Sweeter returns for syrup makers

By Scott Malone

CABOT, Vermont (Reuters) - This season's $60 a gallon pricetag on maple syrup makes for one expensive pancake breakfast, but it's a windfall for those who coax it out of trees.

A surge in the price of maple syrup has brought new opportunity to thousands of small, mostly family-run businesses in the United States and Canada that produce the sweet, aromatic treat.

For the past decade, rising energy prices had put a squeeze on syrup makers, who spend frigid late-winter evenings in steamy huts boiling the watery maple sap to make the thick, amber syrup that sweetens breakfasts around the world. Sugarers burn oil or wood to boil the sap and the prices of both fuels have risen sharply over the past few years.

That pressure on profit margins has eased following a doubling in the price paid by big buyers to about $44 a gallon ($11 a liter) in just two years. The spike in prices reflects several bad seasons in the Canadian province of Quebec, the world's largest producer of maple syrup.

The cold winters sharply reduced production while demand has stayed relatively constant.

"It actually feels like we're maybe, finally getting paid what it's really worth," said Marcia Maynard, who along with her husband, Ken Denton, runs Cabot Hills Maple in Vermont. "It feels like we're starting to come out ahead."

Maynard and Denton started making syrup in 2002 on their 100-acre (40 hectare) plot in Cabot, population 1,213, just 60 miles south of the Canadian border.

"We've had a relatively recent investment in equipment and so we're still working on paying that off," said Maynard, who makes syrup in a 14-foot (4 meter) long trough called an evaporator, which boils the sap to remove water.

"The price increases really help us feel like we're going to get there," she said.

The rise is enough that Maynard and Denton plan to drill tap holes into another 2,000 trees on a neighbor's property, which will boost their syrup output -- which has ranged from 1,600 gallons (7,300 liters) to 2,200 gallons (10,000 liters) per year -- by about 50 percent.

BRIGHT SPOT IN AGRICULTURE

They are not alone in planning to expand.

"With the prices suddenly jumping up, people have been very interested in expanding their operation, and it is something you can expand pretty quickly," said Timothy Perkins, who runs the University of Vermont's Proctor Maple Research Center.

"Maple is one of the bright spots of agriculture right now," said Jacques Couture, a syrup maker and president of the Vermont Maple Foundation. "We have quite a few producers who actually added taps -- they've invested more money into their business. People are like that when there's money to be made."

Couture's Maple Shop, in Westfield, Vermont, taps 7,500 trees and produces 2,000 to 2,500 gallons (9,092 to 11,370 liters) of syrup a year.