A good maple run requires a stretch of mild spring days and frosty nights. For the third spring in four years, mother nature, in combination with more taps, delivered a record-high maple run.
While sugar bush visitors today may still occasionally hear syrup dripping from a tap into a bucket, they are much more likely to see taps connected to hundreds of metres of plastic tubing that work with gravity or pumps to bring the syrup to the sugar shack.
If Quebec is the home of Canada’s maple syrup industry, accounting for 90% of national production, then Beauce, south of Quebec City, is surely its heart, with approximately half of the maple farms in the province located in the region.
Quebec maple farmers tapped a record-high 15.9 million gallons of liquid gold in 2022, up 59% from a year earlier and enough maple syrup to fill eight Olympic-sized swimming pools. The surplus from the 2022 maple run allowed the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers to replenish its strategic reserve, which had been drawn down in 2021 to meet increased domestic and foreign demand. Statistics Canada counted 8,653 maple farms in Quebec in 2021.
While Statistics Canada counted 188 maple farms in New Brunswick in 2021, these farms tapped just over 3.5 million trees. In 2022, maple producers in New Brunswick tapped a record-high 811 thousand gallons of maple syrup, up 3% from 2021.
Historic high yields in Northern Ontario contributed to a 28% rise in production to 590 thousand gallons in the province. Ontario ranked second nationally in terms of farms reporting tapping maple trees in 2021 (2,469 farms) and third in taps (2 million).
Starting in January and February, maple producers in Eastern Canada will be venturing into the woods to tap the trees and connect the tubes that will bring the maple tree’s bounty to the sugar shacks in the coming spring.
The results of the 2023 maple run will be released in early December 2023.
Contact information
For more information, contact the Statistical Information Service (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).