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The University of Vermont Maple Benchmark project is advancing the study of maple economics and supporting management decision making at the individual business level. The following article summarizes the cost of production findings from 2014 and synthesizes key trends in business management.
Our objective in this 2020 study was to revisit walnut tree sap flow and to determine whether vacuum applied to sap collection lines would substantially increase the production of walnut sap. Along the way, we made some somewhat startling and troublesome observations and formulated a next generation of questions that need to be answered to allow a viable walnut syrup industry to develop.
This report summarizes the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) forest inventory data, collected from 2008 to 2012, for Southern New England, defined as Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. In addition to providing regional and state-level summaries, the reports highlights three focus plots, one average or prototypical plot from each State, as a means to better tell the story of the forests of the region. Forests cover an estimated 5,128,000 acres or 59 percent of Southern New EnglandÑ1,736,000 acres in Connecticut (56 percent of the State), 3,028,000 acres in Massachusetts (61 percent), and 364,000 acres in Rhode Island (55 percent). There was no substantial change in the area of forest land between the current, 2012, and the previous, 2007, FIA inventories.
One of the more common questions producers have when about tapping maple trees is Òhow deep should spouts be driven in to the taphole?Ó. Unfortunately, there is not a simple answer, since different spouts have different dimensions, variable degrees of taper and steps, and are made of different materials with dissimilar degrees of Òstickiness.Ó Regardless, the importance of driving spouts in to the proper depth is readily apparent: if spouts are driven too shallow there is a risk that spouts can leak vacuum or heave easily during freezes, but if driven too deeply, small cracks may form which cause liquid and vacuum leaks or alternatively, the reduced amount of exposed wood surface area inside the taphole caused by driving spouts in too deeply may reduce sap collection.
The North American Maple Project, begun in 1988 with the goal of evaluating and monitoring trees from Nova Scotia to Minnesota, was initiated to answer many questions, which could be summed up as: what is the current health of sugar maple in these various regions, and is it getting better, worse, or staying the same?
As the US domestic maple syrup crop continues to grow the influence of different scales and types of business can shape local communities and national trends. Survey results presented here demonstrate the dramatic difference in the scale of maple enterprises as represented by tap count and the resulting working forest acres these businesses utilize.
In attempting to establish criteria for organic certification of maple operations, there are still some wide disagreements among certifying agencies over how to regulate behavior that is unique to maple.
How may climate change impact the maple syrup industry? Our team of interdisciplinary researchers, ACERnet (Acer Climate and Socio-Ecological Research Network), has been working to understand the complex answers to this question for the past several years. In particular, we are interested in examining how climate impacts the timing of the maple tapping season as well as both the quality and quantity of sap collected during the tapping season.
A summary of the current state of maple production in New England is based on surveys returned from approximately 220 sugarmakers in April, 2011.
There are a variety of reasons why sugarmakers might want to tap earlier than the traditional date: thousands of taps that take several weeks to install, lower snow cover and easier walking before mid to late winter, climate change generally moving the season forward and providing more sap flow weather in January and February. For most sugarmakers, the bottom line is simply this: what tapping time frame results in the highest sap yield? The experiments described below, which were performed between 2000 and 2007, were designed to answer this question.