For nearly 30 years, Kevin Keyes and his brother-in-law Bob Chambers have run Dry Brook Sugar House in Salem, New York.
Dry Brook Sugar House is nestled amid maple forests on the border of New York and Vermont. During this year’s maple season, which can run from February to April, they made 4,000 gallons of maple syrup. It has been their best season yet.
But even though American maple producers sell to American consumers, they have not remained unscathed in President Donald Trump’s trade war.
“This equipment did come out of Canada, it is Canadian, so when we bought it there was no tariffs,” Chambers said while showing CNN their evaporator, which helps refine the maple sap into syrup.
Trump placed 25% tariffs on all goods from Canada in March, in part to help domestic industries. But nearly all the equipment needed to produce maple syrup in the United States, from the vacuum system that collects sap from the trees to the machinery to remove the water, is imported from Canada. Higher production costs could ultimately impact the price Americans pay for a bottle of maple syrup.
Adam Wild, Director of Cornell University’s Uihlein Maple Research Forest, says that since producers operate on thin margins, the 25% tariff will likely lead to higher prices for consumers.
“Most of that equipment is being produced within Quebec and coming across. So, any added tariff would then potentially increase, if it’s 25% or whatever it is, would most likely increase the cost of that equipment for a producer,” Wild said.
Maple farmers, who often own family-run businesses, agree they cannot entirely shoulder those higher costs.
“If something is going up 25% or 5% whatever and you sell it at the same price you’ve been selling it at for the last five years that is going to dent our pockets,” Keyes, co-owner of Dry Brook Sugar House, said.
At Mapleland Farms, also in Salem, co-owner David Campbell is hesitant to burden consumers with higher costs.
“It’s hard to raise the price to the consumer when you’re trying to give them a fair price,” Campbell said, adding that, “we’ve got to make a living too.”
On his farm, Campbell has up to 20,000 tap lines running during maple season collecting sap. Although his family farm is at full capacity for production, Campbell says they regularly have to buy upgraded equipment. He also worries these tariffs could have a negative impact on smaller farms looking to expand or people who want to try maple farming for the first time.
“It’s going to make it harder for production to grow with the cost of equipment and expansion going up unless there is a bigger increase in the price of a finished product. The consumer is going to get that,” Campbell said.
In preparation for the tariff announcement, Campbell said local equipment companies were stockpiling syrup manufacturing supplies from Canada in order to purchase it at a lower price.
“They were moving truckloads of maple equipment across the border at that time just to try to get it here before any tariffs went in place, but that’s only a short-term solution,” he said.
Canada controls the market
America produced 5.86 million gallons of maple syrup last year, according to the USDA, the majority in New York and Vermont. But that is not enough to keep up with the demand from American consumers, Wild says.
“It would have to at least double, if not more,” Wild says of America’s maple syrup production capacity. “It probably needs to triple in size.”
The US is the primary importer of Canada’s maple syrup, buying about 60% of their product annually, according to the Canadian government. Campbell doesn’t see a way for American producers to make up what is lost from our neighbors to the north.
“We’d need to purchase a lot more equipment. We would have to search for more labor, which is an issue,” Campbell said.
And with the way the market works, the cost of American-made maple syrup will rise along with Canadian syrup. A gallon of maple syrup retails for $55.70, according to the most recent government data.
“Within the United States there are a few large packers or bulk buyers who buy maple syrup from hundreds of different producers, and then they have the accounts with the Costco’s and the Walmart’s and large grocery store chains,” Wild explains.
Since those bulk buyers package and sell to those large accounts, Wild adds, “they’re going to set their price for how much they pay a United States producer based on how much it costs them to buy maple syrup out of Quebec.”
And Quebec producers keep a tight control on prices. The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, a government-supported organization which is often called the OPEC of maple syrup, uses its strategic reserves to control syrup prices and supply. The strategic reserve in Quebec stores more syrup than what the US produces in a single year, according to Wild.
In February, the International Maple Syrup Institute wrote a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, urging her against imposing tariffs for fear it would “harm U.S. maple syrup producers and impose significant burdens on both consumers and the industry.”
Instead of helping American producers, they warned, the tariffs would “contribute to inflationary pressures for the consumers.”
In response, the USDA did not address any of the group’s concerns but thanked them for “sharing your insights on the Trump administration’s agricultural trade policy.”
With the talks of tariffs seeming to change week to week, all these farmers can do is sit and wait to see how the trade war trickles down to their family farms.
“We’re going to just hold steady,” Keyes said resolutely.
“If the tariffs do go in place on the syrup, they haven’t actually as of today, but that can change tomorrow, so we’re going to have to raise the price based on that if they do,” Campbell said.
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