I love that there is a
maple syrup cartel. Of course it is in Canada:
After eight years of tightly limiting output to keep prices high, the
Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers next year will boost its
quota by 12 percent for 13,500 sap farmers who operate in the Canadian
province. The goal is twofold: Reclaim the 10 percent of market share
lost to the U.S. over the last decade, and quell a rebellion by
producers increasingly turning to black market sales for growth.
Boosting
the quota now is “almost perfect timing” as farmers are seeing record
output, according to Alan Bryson, 41, who drains sap from 45,000 taps on
trees in Notre-Dame-de-la-Merci, Quebec. The prospect of more sales
“outweighs the frustration” felt by farmers in the past, he said....
The unanswered question is where all this additional product is going to
go. Tappers this year will be paid C$2.88 ($2.20) a pound, based on a
weighted average, federation data show. That’s up a penny from the
previous two years...
U.S. production this year totaled 4.2 million gallons, a 23 percent
boost from a year earlier, with Vermont accounting for 47 percent of the
total, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in June. The number of
taps rose 5 percent this year, to 12.55 million, after increasing 45
percent from 2007 and 2015, according to the USDA.
That growth
frustrated Quebec farmers, who have been urging an end to quotas. While
the government-sanctioned cartel kept prices stable by limiting output
and maintaining strategic stockpiles, tappers complained that the system
imposed a “heavy, inflexible handicap to the province’s performance,”
according to a 70-page report commissioned by Quebec Agriculture
Minister Pierre Paradis, released earlier this year.
That frustration was leading some farmers to sell on the black market, and some said they felt harassed by the federation, according to the report.
Nothing like a cartel to cost itself market share. Previous story on the Great Maple Syrup Heist
here.
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