Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: Started a little bit late, Mark. I think we can probably all stay a few minutes if we've more material benefits in the time. I can be flexible on the timing. Well, for joining us.

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: Well, thanks for having me. And just as an introduction, my name is Mark Isselhardt. I'm the Maple specialist and I lead the Extension Maple program with the University of Vermont. And as you probably heard from others, you know, I'm not here in any sort of capacity to influence or lobby. It's really just a shared knowledge and give you an update on what we see in terms of trends. Happy to answer questions on the fly, whatever may pop into your head. I would say broadly, the Extension Maple program focuses on three main areas, sugarbush health and management, sustainable high yields of sap and syrup, and syrup quality. And those three buckets really capture most of of the maple industry. The one that I personally or the maple program doesn't focus on is sort of the business side. That's really the purview of Mark Canela, who's a extension faculty, focuses on farm business and has within the last ten years become more interested and involved in maple. So I would defer to his expertise on the business side for the most part. But there's, I think what's important to remember is that maple is its iconic non timber forest product. So we're talking about something that's harvested from the trees, not something from the plant itself or not the plant itself. And that it is a very traditional product, but there has been innovation essentially from the first time a human found a way to harvest the sugar from a dormant maple tree. And although in a lot of ways, some of the communication imagery around maple tends to focus on a particular era of when maple was made, there's been innovation. And we just in our conversation earlier, we were talking about the development of tubing. People in my position, when tubing was first coming out, were making recommendations of take your tubing, tap your tree, roll out your tubing on the ground and generally make sure it's downhill. But that's standard practice. Now if we did that, people would be concerned about our well-being and that sort of thing. So there's been innovation since tubing was invented. I think what's important is that not only the harvesting has techniques and materials has changed, but how we manage the forests and how we approach sugarbush management is evolving and has evolved. And one thing that hasn't really changed is that commitment bound quality and how you can make excellent syrup using very modest methods and you can make excellent syrup with the highest tech that we have available. And the inverse is also true. You can fail to hit the grade A target with either of those techniques or anything in between. And so what I think is important about the work we do is that we focus on not just one aspect, but broadly, because they're interconnected. You know, how the forest is managed impacts the viability of that operation and the ability to harvest abundant, high quality sap and transforming it from sap to syrup. However the sugar maker chooses to do it, ultimately they're all beholden to meet the same standards that are regulated by the agency of ag. So in no particular order other than kinda working from tree to bottle, I just wanted to outline a few things that we work on. I would say fundamentally, a shift in how the forest side of maple is accomplished has changed quite a bit. I would say that broadly, say, one hundred years ago or even more, the sugar bush itself was seen as a place where you went and got the sap. And you have to imagine a time when you were literally holding buckets of sap and hauling them from tree to some collection point. The idea that you would somehow distribute the growing space to many, many trees just meant you had to go to more places to collect the sap. And generally, we know that larger trees produce more sap on average than smaller trees. And generally, a larger crown tree will have sweeter sap. That knowledge plus the fact that just functionally going from tree to tree is labor intensive meant that sugarbush management for a very long time was focused on cultivating large diameter, deep crowned, very mature trees. And in practice, what you ended up with was some version of a monoculture where it was really focused all that growing space on the species that we're collecting sap from. And I would say people in my position and just in general producers saw that Sugarbush as this place where I went and collected the sap from. It wasn't necessarily seen as a the concept of forest ecosystem maybe wasn't even very well developed at that point. And I think over time and probably within really the last thirty years, we're seeing a shift in forestry in general and thinking about forestry just as a place to harvest forest products, be it quality sawlogs or pulp or maple sap, and also kind of engaging with the ecology and making sure that it's healthy, as healthy as possible. So there isn't really a curriculum for sugarbush management. Last summer, we had a first ever summit of researchers and practitioners trying to understand, okay, what are the steps we need to take to actually make some science informed sugarbush management guidelines? Because pretty much everything that's out there now is rooted in this version of management that is tied to gravity bucket sap collection. And with tubing, you don't have to go to every tree every day. Hopefully, feet of the squirrels don't get to you, but hopefully you don't have to go to every tree. And so fundamentally, the management can look very different. And sugaring, again, is very traditional. And we still talk about how many taps do we have. I've got five taps. I've got 10,000. So and so they just grew. They've got a 100,000. But in other agriculture, we talk about in per area basis. You know, how much production per acre. And it's probably time for Maple to kind of move towards that, to be able to compare different management strategies and just compare across products. So one of the things we try to do is engage with the forestry community and our programming, especially the kind of the cornerstone is our Maple Conference every December. We get it approved for forestry credit so that licensed foresters have an incentive to go and learn about Maple and have some conversations going both directions really between producers and foresters to understand the benefits. The other thing is just the nature of managing a sugarbush is it's not like forest products like a sawlog where you're you have a plan, you harvest at a certain rotation, and you're maybe not back in there with equipment for another fifteen or twenty years, depending. With maple, you're in all the time, but usually with smaller equipment. But it's still really important to think about the infrastructure, the roads, how water is handled in the sugar bush. And these are things that there are a lot of legacy roads in Maple that maybe were made at a time before we had these really dynamic storm events that that had the potential to to wash out. So broadly speaking, would say we're trying to engage and partner with folks like Tony Damato, who leads the extension forestry, sorry, the UVM forestry program, and really trying to engage with the forestry community to build our understanding around maple because it is so different. It isn't really taught in the forestry curriculum for the most part because it is such a different product.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Just wondered if there were some parallels with our orchards now because as we did pretty well in Paraguayville and the new model orchard has moved away from the sort of large tree, big canopy to sort of stems per acre, much smaller, but you get more fruit per acre and you're also online much faster too. Maple's moving in that direction.

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: I think it's probably premature to say it's moving in that direction. I think it's more talking about maple production in a per area basis allows people to utilize what has been a move in the general forest management community towards a more ecological approach to forestry. But it's not on a per stem basis so much. It's more on a per area basis. At the extreme would be, you probably remember from about a dozen years ago, some work that Doctor. Tim Perkins and Abby, Doctor. Abby Van Berg did looking at small saplings that still gets quite a bit of attention. That would be that kind of model, but I don't see the industry moving in that direction. Really, it's more kind of taking the best parts of the kind of newer approaches to forest management and applying it to this forest product like it is for other forest products. Everyone's planning is a good question, Sean. No, it's pretty much all wild regeneration. And occasionally you have people who are passionate do it, but anyone who's tried to cultivate a tree and plant, it's hard. It's hard. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Really doesn't. Yeah. I asked Ms. Willard earlier about, and I champion everything maple and the working lands and overindulge on maple open house weekend. There are you folks hearing concerns from environmental groups about sugar and pipelines out in the woods and whatnot, You know, roads, our maple tap count has really expanded in the last twenty years, you know, up in the Northeast Kingdom, they're tapping places, sweet tree and whatnot that haven't been haven't been can or never were tapped. Right. Do you you see that as much of a that on your radar?

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: Or I mean, think people, if you are have a point of view that there's one way to produce maple syrup and it happens to reflect, you know, maybe an earlier style, maybe buckets or just simple small tubing system. I have heard people who have concerns, but I wouldn't say it's dramatic. It tends to be on an individual basis. One thing that's important to remember is that broadly across the state, we are maybe tapping five to 10% of potential taps. It's still very low. That is not equally distributed across the state. So in Franklin County, it's 50%. And I'm sure producers in Franklin County are asking where the other 50% might be.

[Rep. Gregory “Greg” Burtt (Member)]: Try to find one tree in Franklin.

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: Yeah. So that five to 10%, you know, always be cautious around averages, right? But there are huge parts of the state that have the potential for being tapped that aren't. And I think when you have an individual, maybe a neighbor or cases where they're unfamiliar with maple in general and it appears, then you might have some concern. But there's also a lack of research. Right now, we have a couple of grad students at UVM who are looking at the interaction between wildlife and sugar bushes. And they use game cameras spread throughout, including the sugar bush at UVM. And they've captured some amazing videos of bull moose going right under the main lines and a huge diversity of wildlife. So I think depending on people's point of view, they might have concerns, but some of that could just be lack of awareness or lack of data otherwise.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And the other question I had was, we're the sugar makers in this state, and it should be a great sense of pride to the whole state, is the research done out at Procter Maple Research Center. I I and and your your leaders your leaders in the maple industry across North America as far as I'm concerned. You receive funding from other states or is this all?

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: We don't get funding from other states per se. We can partner with other states or other institutions. We do benefit from funding from competitive grants from federal source and then also from state sources on a on a project by project basis. But thank you for the kind words. It's definitely something we we enjoy doing, and it's complex. There's it interacts with lots of different elements. Repent,

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: let's give it

[Unidentified Committee Member]: to you. Yes. Thank you, John. Yeah. Mark, welcome again. So, obviously, you know I come from a point of view of management. You pointed to a piece of artwork behind me. It's still there, but just for the record, this is not good forest management, and you went into the historical model. But with that said, you know, in my community, I have watched in the last twenty to thirty years how responsibilities for what you call ecological logging, Some of these responsibilities have been around for a few decades, and we more describe it as creating more biodiversity, more climate resilience, more protection of soil productivity, and then the other values from an ecological or global point of view has to do with migratory bird habitats, other wildlife habitat, trying to create a different structure or more diversified odd age structure of the forest, so bring it back to how loggers and forest managers and foresters try to hold all these complex responsibilities and values, what do you see happens with, to create more biodiversity, yes you meet some beach and we've got threatened ash, you have spruce, fir, interspersed, and hemlock, and even pine. What is someone who's actually stewarding a forest that can be compatible with enhanced ecological management for sugaring. What do we do with the other 50 species?

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: Right, right. Well, like I said before, like we are in a bit of a gap in terms of long term research to answer that question. I mean, management takes a long time. Unfortunately, funding for long term work tends to not get the same amount of backing as maybe a short term quick data collection research. But I would say that broadly, the biggest change that we've seen is the diversity, and that's really related to producers becoming certified organic. Most of the certifiers require a 25% non sugar maple mix in your forest. Sugar maker is largely the barrier is very low. It's not like other crops where it has a lot of chemical inputs and and and that sort of thing. Maples, again, know, it's drilling a hole in a tree and there's not a whole lot else that needs to happen. In the sugar house, there's a little bit with with defoaming, but for the most part, it's paperwork and then a management plan that cultivates that 25% non sugar maple. Producers do get a premium for that when they sell their syrup. And given that the barrier is so low, we see two thirds of the crop or maybe even closer to three quarters is now certified organic. It's really important to remember, though, that the crop is different than the producer population. So like another ag, 80% of the crop is made by 20% of the producers for maple. So if I say two thirds or close to three quarters of the crop, that isn't necessarily several thousand producers making that. It's the relatively small, large operations. In Vermont, we have by far the largest number of large operations in the country. We have about 140,000 acres of sugarbush under management, which represents over half of all the acres in the country. We produce half, over half the crop. So a lot is going on in Vermont relative to The US production. I would say going back to your original question of like what producers or the foresters who work with those forest producers do, it's I mean, you have to start somewhere. So if you have a sugar bush that has had well meaning, but generations of maybe excluding everything but sugar maple, some of it is just letting the forest do its thing. You don't want to have all your taps all of a sudden be taken over, but forests tend to work slowly. And so maybe it's retaining that red maple instead of cutting it for firewood. Maybe it's And again, the imagery, I hate to keep coming back to the imagery, but the idea of a resilient sugarbush might look pretty different. It might look like you have a lot of down material that no sugar maker wants to walk through, but there are ways of managing it in the context of a tubing system that would allow that organic material to stay and benefit the forest in terms of absorbing water and habitat for birds. And the concept of cleaning up the woods might be something that we're encouraging people to kind of move away from. Leave more tops in the woods, allow for a little bit more diversity and move towards,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: move away from a monopoultry. Follow-up. Greg Burtt his an expert on this, it's a Mycelium. Mycelium. And we're learning how what a critical component that is for forest health, trees, and the other complex, you know, credible ecological system where Rev Bos-Lun's benefit and the rest of ours, could you you and what you were talking about is leaving more tops

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: or deadfall enough. Right, I mean, it's retaining more organic material that, especially for germinating things like sugar maple, they need that rich humus layer above the soil to allow for germination to happen. And when you constantly remove, then it's hard to build up that organic layer. So I think and there's so much we don't know about how that incredible network of mycelium and connection between trees and between different species. That's all really still cutting, pretty cutting edge and pretty unknown. Would say that the basics of forest, a healthy forest would be one that has a certain amount of diversity, that there's complexity in the structure, age structure, so it's not just a single cohort of trees coming through, and then also structural diversity. So you have habitat and you have places along the whole spectrum from the forest floor all the way up to the top of the canopy rather than this sort of open park like. It tends to be we are seeing that as being a more vulnerable forest given big storm events, given wind, water, and just not having trees that are able to exploit gaps when they do occur and be that next generation. Sugar maple to some degree, maple, are shade tolerant, but that doesn't mean they're shade loving. They will exist in the understory for a while, but ultimately to thrive, they need to be released or have a gap above them. And that's either through intentional management or it's natural disturbance. Representative O'Brien.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Over the holidays, family and I grew up in Quebec City and got far I see now from the center, Acer Center. The other thing I saw was a lot of maple forests with tubing, but they somehow looked different than Vermont forests. Quebec is such a amethyst in maple sugaring world. Are their forests somehow different? You probably share a lot of research too. Right, and collaborate.

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: Yep, the Center Acer, for those of you are not aware, is probably the closest thing to what we have at UVM, the Proctor Center, in terms of what they focus on, but it's very different in how it's funded. It's industry funded rather than funded through grants or appropriations. And while we work on similar projects, because it is private and industry funded, they don't necessarily have to share everything that gets done. But the fourth, to your original question, the forests, it is a continuation of this broad Appalachian forest type, the beech birch maple that runs all along, It doesn't follow borders. It's critically important. I will say though, that nutrition wise forest soils, they can be a little bit diminished, especially after a long period of acid deposition. They do have generally smaller trees, not exclusively. I mean, there's plenty of big trees too, but in general, they tend to be a little bit smaller. And the other thing that's amazingly different is just the impact of public versus private land. The concept of crown land up there, which is sort of quasi public, that's where the tapping takes place. In Vermont and elsewhere, it's just a tiny fraction of a percent that's actually on public land. It's almost all private land. So there are a lot of similarities, but there are also a lot of differences. And the other thing we could spend the whole hour talking about the Quebec system, but it's a supply management system. So are required producers who sell more than just a few gallons are required to sell into one central organization. And then they are the ones who market the syrup globally. The US happens to be the biggest beneficiary of that syrup. So they export 60% of their crop to satisfy The US market. So we don't produce anywhere close to enough syrup to satisfy domestic demand. And there's all sorts of opinions around whether that's a healthy arrangement or if we should be actively working to to change that. But I would say the fact is they have a huge market share, and how the Quebec industry is organized has immediate impacts on Vermont producers. Representative

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: Greg Burtt. Yeah. Just

[Rep. Gregory “Greg” Burtt (Member)]: commenting on your diversity in the forest. In our particular woods, the interstate highway cut our farm in half, hayfields, and pasture. And back in the day, sugar bushes were pastured. And since this late sixties, when my grandfather tapped 500 big trees, those trees on the north and south prevailing winds seeded that whole hillside with young mates so that from when he got unsugaring in the forties to when my brother and I started in seventies, we were starting out with and the soil was rich because they grow like grow like crazy. And we don't have the ability to bring logging equipment into our woods, so it's a mess. But the buckthorns grew up around the big trees. Had to cut them down to tap trees. You couldn't see through the forest, and now you can look all the way through because and it's everything. It's birch. It's beach. And it's you just I got to see it actually grow. And and it kinda was amazing to see what you know, back when the went through and you had the aerial photos, you could count every tree on that hill. Now it's just forest. And the animals are I mean, you can jump a deer. And go right through that tube and they don't even touch it even with the antlers. But we always put our lines up with a pop pole of spouses so

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I can walk through there.

[Rep. Gregory “Greg” Burtt (Member)]: That's just a comment I wanted to make.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: It really

[Unidentified Committee Member]: about centers.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah, I was just wondering, in terms of the not accessing public lands in Vermont, like, why don't we let people use public lands? And do you think that we should? Right.

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: Well, to be clear, there is some tapping on state land.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But you said it was like tiny

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: Very small. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So why not? We have so much

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: I think it has to do with alignment with the management plan for the particular forest that people have the potential to tap. And I think I'm on the committee, just to be clear, I'm on the committee that oversees that along with some other non state folks. And we discuss it. It's on a kind of a case by case basis. Producers typically who are adjacent to state land and now already have an existing operation can petition to be included. So it's a small program, but it continues. It's been going for a long time. I guess I'm not going to weigh in on my opinion of whether there should be more. I've just acknowledged that it is a relatively small percentage and that, you know, access to land is challenging. It's expensive. But if you were to have a tubing system put up, likely it would not be a bucket. It would have to be a tubing system to be commercially viable. The Forest Parks and Rec would need to balance that proposal amongst all the other goals for the plan and to see if it aligns. And that I think is pretty case by case basis. So I think it's probably producer knowledge of the program even exists and then a willingness to go through the steps to potentially tap a section.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Green Mountain National Forest? Do the plants let

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: you do it too? There's a little bit. It's a permitted process, slightly different than what the state has, but they do allow some. I can't off the top of my head remember exactly how many, but it's in the thousands, it's not tens of thousands.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: Big

[Unidentified Committee Member]: basin back in there.

[Rep. Gregory “Greg” Burtt (Member)]: When you were talking about the managed sugar bushes, you go back in history, everyone burned oil, it came from the sugar bush. In gathering buckets, you didn't walk trees off, and the cows were in there. Everyone's oil or gas, wood chips, so they're not going into the woods and trying to get rid so that there's woods are starting to fill.

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: I would agree. I would agree that that, and I can even point to the research center, Sugarbush, that we burned wood. When my very first job at UVM as a forestry student was splitting firewood to feed the arts,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: and we don't do that anymore. But

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: there are still people doing wood for But even then, unless you're dialed in and have all that equipment, it's incredibly expensive. And so people tend to buy logs and process it themselves if they're going to run wood. I didn't want to touch oh, is there another question? Sure.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: Then we'll let

[Unidentified Committee Member]: you Sure. And off on

[Unidentified Committee Member]: tangent here. Sorry. I'm looking at a map here at the Audubon certified bird friendly sugar operations. Do do you have any idea what percentage of our sugar bushes have that and does it help?

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: Sure. So UVM participates in that program. It's a voluntary program. It is a basically an agreement that you are going to manage your woods for certain attributes like the diversity of species and structure and age diversity, retaining standing dead trees to provide habitat at a certain density across your sugarbush. Again, it's a voluntary program. Producers who participate can put a sticker on their jug to say that they participate. It was started by Steve Hagenbou with Vermont Audubon and has now grown beyond Vermont. So I think I don't have a number for what percent he would be the one to answer that. I would say it's appealing because you can get the benefit of this. Sort of enhanced habitat while still harvesting the product. And so you're not necessarily reducing your yield as a result, you're just. Intentionally doing some things to promote it. So I think it's we participate at UVM, so I think it's a good mix.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Does it help with that consumers like it? Does it help?

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: It's not something that I've collected any data to say, but I would mean, most people like birds and yeah, I think it's a. There's a lot of mystery around maple. People generally don't understand how the process works. And so but people will. Have a response to seeing a bird or a tree. And that tends to be positive, I would say. So yeah, I would say if you were to do some sort of survey, people would say yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: The bottles run with the sticker

[Unidentified Committee Member]: and one without. Pick the one with

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: Whether or not it makes a difference or not, I would leave it to Steve to answer that question. Yeah. I would say that we could maybe go into the next stage of like the harvesting of the sap rather than cultivating the healthy forest. Our yields have been going up. So in the last twenty five years, on average, the amount of syrup per tap has increased 60%. And by and large, that means people who are using tubing and vacuum, but also managing their tubing system. You know, when I started, the tubing system looked a lot like it does today in a way, but the vacuum pumps were essentially dairy milking pumps that were designed to run twice a day or maybe three times a day and shut off again. They were not designed to run 20 fourseven. And now it's standard procedure to have a vacuum pump on and capable of running 20 fourseven to keep that difference in pressure running. So the yields are going up. And I would say broadly using best practices, you on average harvest twice as much sap and sugar from the trees compared to what we'd see in a bucket type collection. The question almost always comes right after that statement, you know, what's it do to the tree? And it, we have a limited data set. We have a long term project at Proctor where it's a group of trees with no history of tapping. A third are being tapped to the highest vacuum possible. A third with gravity, essentially no vacuum. And a third, no tapping at all. And we are in our fourteenth year of that project. Which if you remember, getting funding for long term work is challenging because you don't really ever get on a eureka moment necessarily. You're building the story around whatever you're investigating. But after that long period, relatively, we're not seeing differences in that growth. The primary measure is tree growth. Are we somehow inhibiting the tree's ability to grow by taking twice as much sugar from the tree? There are a lot of other ways to measure health and the effect, but the primary measure that we look at is growth. We're not publishing, we're not making huge statements about sustainability because that's the blink of an eye in terms of the growth. These are all sugar maples, by the way. They're not red maples. So there are some indications. We know acute mortality or significant stress as a result of that. But we are still building that story because it's a chronic stress. I mean, you're making a wound, you're extracting some of the tree's stored energy. But there's so many basic questions we don't have answers to. Like what percent of the trees total are we taking? How old are the sugars? We know it's not just last year's production that we're harvesting, but we don't really know how old and spatially amongst the tree. We don't know exactly where it's coming from. We have have an educated, pretty good handle on it, but we don't know precisely. So all those questions would impact our feeling around the sustainability of whether or not modern sugaring is sustainable or not. But we have not seen mortality and the work continues. Sustainable

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: in the sense of a tree lasts as long as it would normally last. Lives as long as it

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: would normally last. Right. I should have been more clear. So the two primary measures in our sense, our thinking is to be sustainable, the tree has to add a net positive amount of wood as a while being tapped. So, you know, you drill a hole, you remove some of the tree xylem and the tree responds to that by essentially rolling off internally a portion of that stem that's no longer available for either sap collection or for that matter, water moving during the growing season. It's just a really effective and fascinating process, but it essentially walls off a little bit of tissue. So if you take that three-dimensional volume, we would define sustainability as more wood being added every year than what's being removed as a result of tapping. And then the second part is we're not taking too much. And I did, you know, air quotes intentionally use because we don't know what too much is. So too much might, in a year where it's a drought year and the tree shuts down photosynthesis for long sections of the growing season, taking a certain amount might be significant. But we know we're not just harvesting last year's sugar, so there's a bit of buffer there. The new scientific director at Procter, Tim Roddermacher, is interested in looking at that, the sugar part. So trying to age the sugar that we're extracting, understand a little better about the dynamics. So I'm hopeful that within a year or two, we'll at least have the beginnings of some of that second story. The first part we can measure. We can measure basal area growth and compare it to a more traditional tapping or no tapping. And that's where we're not seeing any difference in the growth rates.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing about the test too is that the common denominators are true. We know our forests are under stress with climate change and things like the drought or ice storms or whatever, and it's hitting all your little categories altogether. Right?

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: It's also a bit of a limitation too, because it's a single site. So, you know, mileage may vary. Right? And so it's the best work, in my opinion, that's being done in this area, but it is just one site, one set of climate and weather conditions. We'd love to see that duplicated in other places in Vermont and beyond. So more at the periphery of where maple is made. It takes a fair amount to do. It's costly and like all good science, you really need to be confident in the data. So just doing it and kind of haphazard is not really a great way to do science.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Do we know how much 100% sap would be in a tree?

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: 100% sap?

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: We're drawing off certain amount. So how much sap is on the move, the sugars, right? You mentioned sugar. So you never totally tack

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: the tree out of every last Well, it's important to remember that it's not a fixed amount. So when the classic freeze thaw event that drives sap flow, you're actually pulling new moisture into the stem from the ground. And so it's not like day one of a sugaring season, there's a reservoir and we're however many days the season lasts, that's how much you can draw down that reservoir. It's a moving It's

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: like a river essentially going the next

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: half. Yep. And just, I mean, there's no way of predicting. This season for sure is a perfect example of the saying, like, if you've seen one sugaring season, you've seen one sugaring season because they can be very different. And at the end of the day, you have your total. But how you got there, it could come from many, many small runs. It could come from just a handful. I mean, a sugar maker in a three day period could make a quarter of their crop if it ran really well or not if the weather didn't cooperate. So it's. We don't know how much of a percentage. Depends on the tree size. Depends on the tree size. Once you get into what we would recommend is nine inches in diameter and up. You're talking in probably as far as the sugar, less than 10%. That's assuming everything is available. It's probably closer to 5%. And that's really a guess. That's not based on hard data. But once you get it to be bigger and bigger and treated, that percentage goes way down. Yeah. But the technology is evolving too. So what was considered high vacuum ten years ago is there's a leak, you know, where are the leaks? So it's a moving target there too. So I would say that broadly the technology continues to evolve, how people manage their vacuum, the materials they're using, even the diameter of the spout that people are using has changed. So there's every reason to believe that's going to continue to innovate. Would say it's still very labor intensive. And when I talk to producers, that's by far the number one thing. Finding people to actually do the work during a really tough, less than ideal period of time in terrain that's challenging. So I would say that's probably one of the largest things restricting kind of increased growth. The

[Rep. Gregory “Greg” Burtt (Member)]: thing

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: that really promotes, I would say, growth in the industry, it would appear is prices, you know, prices paid to to bulk producers and that you can almost draw a direct line to the Canadian price. And then from that, it's 7 Canadian dollars, which you can tie to oil prices. So you can get basically from price of a barrel of oil to how much a Vermont sugar maker is paid in any given year. It's a pretty direct line.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: So as the price of oil goes up, does that increase the

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: You would expect, again, I'm not an economist, but what I understand to be the case is that the Canadian dollar is really influenced by the price of oil. And since the Canadian price, they have such a market share and the way they organize their production is they can limit supply, but they can also forecast what they will pay. And so if the Canadian dollar comes up relative to the US dollar, that difference is felt almost immediately by producers outside the province. There's a quota system. There's all sorts of restrictions on production in Quebec, but people outside the province are not holding to that. We are just want to be respectful of your time. Sure.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: And committee members who may need to go to something at noon, but You probably have more I do, yeah. Prepared to share. Representative Brigham.

[Rep. Gregory “Greg” Burtt (Member)]: I just wanted to say that the stuff you do at Proctor, you know, it's pretty valuable to us as sugar makers. Things that we do at our is every year before everybody heads to the woods. We watch the YouTube and see what

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: Okay. Great.

[Rep. Gregory “Greg” Burtt (Member)]: And they all sit there and they'll they'll know That's great

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: to hear. Find a good one. Mhmm.

[Rep. Gregory “Greg” Burtt (Member)]: So we spend more time looking the tree over and actually drilling holes.

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: It's been really helpful. That's encouraging to hear. Thank you. Yeah. If I could have just a minute or two to talk about the sort of last we just barely touched on those first two, but syrup quality, I'm happy to say that we have now at UVM Extension, Maple syrup quality testing lab. And this is a It's an opportunity for producers to send samples of syrup in to get tested for the basics of quality. And that's sort of what's on the poster. You probably heard from Tucker and Abby around inspections and where quality is. We know that there are issues in the marketplace. And so we, You can produce the amount Huge amount of syrup, but if it doesn't meet grade A standards, the whole industry suffers. And so we have focused quite a bit on syrup quality over the last few years. Quality testing lab at its most basic is more precise, more accurate instruments to measure the same thing that sugar makers are doing in the sugar house. And we give them reports to say, did you meet grade A standards? And if you didn't, where was that gap? And then we follow-up with technical assistance if people don't understand why their syrup is out of grade. So we are excited to be able to offer that and hope to grow it beyond Vermont because even even then, people just don't understand what maple syrup is or what grade A syrup means. And the growth in the industry has been largely in the bulk market. And even people who are making, you know, filling a 50 gallon barrel every five minutes, ten minutes, we still encourage them to taste every batch and make sure that meets the standard. So it really does matter. I'm happy to share more about that, but I just wanna make sure we got that in because letting producers have a third party assessment of quality that isn't a transaction between a buyer and seller is one of the reasons why we started it, to be an impartial and trusted source of information. The bulk market has grown. Twenty five years ago, 50% of the crop was sold in bulk and the rest was either retail or wholesale. Now it's closer to 90%. And that's because the growth of the industry is, as far as crop size, is really around bulk syrup. And to be clear, that bulk syrup means you have multiple producer syrup blended together and then leaving the plant and going marketing globally. So there is another step in quality in that in the packer. Facility. But upstream is still really, really important to be able to measure quality effectively and to know when you're grade A and when you're not.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: Patricia, we should make a note next year, ninety minutes at least, from our section. Maybe some some of that time and maybe we have time later this spring, actually. But learning more about the the Canadian way of doing business, it's fascinating as well.

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: I wasn't sure if speaking off the cuff would keep us on track or have it be more wide ranging. I'm open to suggestions if next time.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: This has been really, really enjoyable. So thank you.

[Mark Isselhardt, Maple Specialist, UVM Extension (University of Vermont)]: Great. It's a pleasure. Absolutely, anytime if there's questions committee have, feel free to reach out. I'll leave my contact information. Thank

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: you. Great.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Another field trip to the property.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair), acting Chair]: Another field trip. Yeah. Field trip. We will pray for lunch and keep Yes. Yep. Nice to meet you. After that floor.