Inside the pressures facing Quebec’s billion-dollar maple syrup industry

Saint-Urbain-Premier, Quebec, Canada – In clear safety glasses and heavy beige overalls, Jean-Francois Touchette is in his element.

All around him are pipes, tubes, temperature gauges and various humming instruments: all the machinery needed to turn tree sap into maple syrup. Touchette’s syrup operation is a small one, run out of a modest, two-storey wooden building at the end of a long dirt driveway in rural Quebec.

But as winter turns to spring, Touchette — like thousands of other maple growers in the Canadian province — faces pressure to collect, boil and bottle his harvest.

“It’s a small factory. I’m really at a small scale, but it’s the same, same, same [setup] as the bigger ones,” he told Al Jazeera on a sunny morning in early April, one of the last days of this year’s maple season.

“I produce 650 gallons [about 2,500 litres] a year — 15, 17 barrels.”

Maple syrup is one of Quebec’s most iconic products: No other country or province produces as much of the sticky, sweet topping, often drizzled on pancakes or warm waffles. But a shifting maple syrup season, driven in part by climate change, has created challenges for the industry. In 2023, Quebec produced 35.6 million litres (9.4 million gallons) of maple syrup — down 41.4 percent from the previous year, according to data from Statistics Canada.

As temperatures grow more erratic and winters shorten, Quebec’s syrup producers have been forced to adapt to the changing conditions and adjust their operations accordingly. “We have to tap the trees earlier, and in February, we have to be ready. That’s what it’s brought, climate change: It’s shifting the season,” Touchette said.