Ontario maple syrup producer group offers new training
It has more than 600 members and aims to share knowledge
Charles Summers
Farmers Forum
In days of yore, maple syrup production was largely an exercise in brute force: your success being a measure of your willingness to trudge through the forest, split mountains of firewood and to boil all night. Like any aspect of agriculture, new technologies, financial tools and a lack of human resources has spurred all manner of innovation and change in the sugaring business.
Maple has become a highly technical undertaking: imagine how mystifying things like reverse osmosis and vacuum collection would have been to the sugarmaker with his buckets and sled. As operations grow and become more sophisticated, the large investments involved make success even more critical. Like any aspect of agriculture, high yields and efficiencies are essential to profitability.
Although still requiring a great deal of brute force, syrup production has become an information dense domain, where new tools and techniques are constantly being developed and improved upon.
In regions where maple is a genuine rural industry, like Vermont and Quebec, institutions such as the Proctor Maple Research Centre and Acer Centre actively engage in research and training to bolster the trade. Here in Ontario, with our vast forest resources, we would expect a similar undertaking. On the contrary: OMAFA currently does not have a single maple expert on staff. And so, here in Upper Canada, producers are going to have to do it
themselves.
