Yeah, you read that right. Canada has a strategic maple syrup reserve. It's actually pretty cool, because it's to make sure that there is always maple syrup available, but it also sounds a bit ridiculous.
Maple Syrup is dependent on weather, just like any other crop, and with the shifting weather patterns recently, it has had a few issues. The reserve means that it won't disappear on us if they have a bad year, and basically protects the market overall. It also means that the people who work the trees don't have to worry about storing the maple sugar themselves. Since the people in charge of the Reserve buy all the maple syrup to sell on themselves, the growers also have a bit more protection since they don't have to worry about advertising or figuring out pricing for the syrup, which makes it a lot simpler on them.
Located in Quebec, the reserve is set up to be able to hold about 130 million pounds of maple syrup, which is a lot, between three warehouses. Unfortunately, it's currently at a 16 year low, with only 7% of what was there four years ago. If the weather keeps going like this, the price of real maple syrup might skyrocket and it might disappear. Well, until they can find somewhere else that has the right conditions for gathering maple syrup.
Beyond the existence of the reserve, there is some hilarity over a heist that happened. It's actually been turned into a comedy by Amazon, the Sticky Situation, if you're interested in that. The story is that some workers managed to steal over 18 million dollars worth of maple syrup by taking barrels out, emptying them, then taking the barrels back. In the beginning, they filled the barrels with water again, but towards the end, they didn't bother. That's what led to their downfall, as an inspector ended up noticing the light barrel and therefore investigating further. It took a while to track down all the people involved in this smuggling ring, and figure out how many of the thousands of barrels were still syrup--which was less than half, according to some sources.
If you're curious about it, look it up or read more in the sources below.
Sources:
Reuters- Quebec unlocks world's only maple syrup reserve
Quartz- Canada's Maple Syrup Reserve
The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist
Canadian Encyclopedia-- The Great Canadian Maple Syrup heist
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