September 15, 2021 • 60 mins
Most people are aware of maple syrup -- it's a welcome addition to pancakes and waffles on breakfast tables across the planet. Other than that, you might not think of maple syrup often, unless you're in the industry, or live in a region that produces it. But it turns out there's something brewing out there in the world of Sugar Maples and syrup... and it may be something Big Maple doesn't want you to know.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission controlled decands. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. You can find corruption and conspiracy
in the oddest places. Longtime listeners, you're well aware of this. Uh.
(00:48):
And today we are traveling up to the land of
our lovely northern neighbors. We're traveling to Canada through the
power the mind, right, the theater of imagination. And in
this episode we're exploring a bizarre international well, you could
call it a conspiracy, you could call it an industry.
(01:12):
Some people, rightly or wrongly, are convinced it is a
scam or even racketeering. UH. And this is his story
that may well travel all the way up to your
own breakfast table. No kidding. Before we do the big
reveal and get into this, I have one very important
(01:33):
question for you. Knowl and for you, Matt, and for
everyone listening along at home, waffles or pancakes if you
had to choose one. Oh, you know, I like a
waffle because of the little divits just hold the syrups
so nicely. They're like little syrup cups. You know. I
would have said waffle. But the other day I had
pecan pancakes or pecan pancakes if you're nasty, and they
(01:56):
were incredible. And I used this very bottle allegedly maple syrup,
and it was delicious. You wish on the side, Matt,
I didn't you see the front. I didn't want to
show you the actual company. Yeah, okay, well it checks out.
(02:19):
You can see you can see the name here the Yeah,
I myself am a waffle person because of the surface
area conundrum that you mentioned earlier, or it's a feature
not a bug, also because of the ingredients. But the
crux of today's story, fellow conspiracy realist, is maple syrup. Yes,
(02:40):
you are listening to a show about critical thinking applied
to conspiracy theories, and yes, this episode is about maple syrup.
Trust us worth it problems. So here are the facts.
If you're like most people, You've heard of maple syrup, right,
you've heard of it. It's not it's not new to
your human experience. It's made from this substance called xylem
(03:03):
sap and it comes primarily from three types of trees
that are all maples. Uh. The big the big dog
in the game is sugar maple. But you will also
see people uh ultimately creating maple syrup from red and
black maple trees. It's not a new idea. Like a
(03:24):
lot of things on this continent. Indigenous people had learned
the trick of of this thousands and thousands of years ago.
They already knew how to take this slightly sweet sap
and turn it into syrup. And the process that these
earlier people discovered or created continues today. It's a really
(03:46):
neat marriage of art and science, and it's something that
I think a lot of people don't think about. Like
when if you live in many parts of the US, uh,
you may not even find real maple syrup. Often you
may go for the much more affordable table syrup, which
is not not the legit maple syrup. But if you're
(04:08):
you're in certain regions of this continent, particularly the eastern
northeastern seaboard right Canada, UH and New England. Then it
would be tremendously insulting to serve table syrup to your
loved ones, your friends. They would think, oh, okay, Mr
cheap stuff over here has decided that we are acquaintances
(04:32):
and not yeah, and and like it can seriously be
seen as an insult. And that's because they are very
different things. The I think to set this up, we
need to talk a little bit about the process of
creating this stuff, because so much work goes into it.
And when you understand how much work goes into it,
(04:54):
you can understand a little bit of why maple syrup
is such a big deal to some people. Okay, so
let's talk about sap. That's what we're gonna talk about, uh,
because you need a lot of it to make maple syrup.
The sap is almost like water in terms of the
makeup of the product. It is an incredibly thin um
(05:17):
substance that contains about two sucross, so it makes it sweet,
and about thirty gallons of sap is what it takes
to make it just a single gallon of maple syrup um.
And while of course the sap is the key ingredient
in the process. UM. It also requires another key ingredient,
which is time. UM. You have to have. You know,
(05:39):
you can't grow a tree overnight. A tree needs to
be healthy and it needs to be at least around
ten inches in diameter before it can be tapped UM,
which is exactly what it sounds like. You you know,
stick a device into the tree that then sucks out
the sap or at least allows you to drain the
tree of that soup. UM. And it typically takes a
tree around forty years to reach that kind of size. Yeah,
(06:04):
and it's pretty amazing. The process really is amazing. If
you watch some videos online about it and seeing especially
if it's a larger operation with a lot of maple
trees that have been tapped, and just watch looking at
the lines of of sap that just you know, slowly
drained from the tree into a collection area. It's it's
pretty cool. It's fascinating because you could tap a younger
(06:29):
or smaller tree, but it would have it would have
tough effects on the health of the tree, which is
super important. That's why we say it takes about forty
years because you're waiting for it to reach that size,
and for a large tree, if it's large enough, you
could have multiple taps on the tree. There's a lot
of really cool terminology here that I've just sort of
(06:53):
unapologetically peppered through because it's it's a lot to take
it all at once, but think of it this way.
So the people who tap the trees, they are called
sugar makers, which I think is tremendously sweet on several levels.
And they they're part of where the art and the
science really meet. To do this successfully, they need to
(07:14):
have a very deep understanding of each tree, like they
tend to know its history. They know if they had
any like problems with bugs or some kind of you know,
um rot got to it, and they take immense, immense
pains not to do any lasting harm because if everything
(07:34):
goes well, these trees can be tapped again and again
multiple times over a long period of time, like a
century or more. And and Matt, I'd love to hear
a little more about that sap collection process because it
changed over time, right oh yeah, before the invention of
(07:58):
I guess modern plastic and uh, you know, just some innovation.
The way you would tap an old maple back in
the day is you would have you would do the
thing you have to get a hole into the tree itself.
But before it was just this kind of wooden like
a wooden tube let's say that would come out like
a spout almost or uh that just kind of goes
(08:21):
down and his angle down, and then you'd hang a
bucket onto that wooden piece, or at least you'd get
a bucket very close to where that wooden pieces it's
actually tapping the tree. That bucket would fill up, and
then you take the bucket over dump it into wherever
you collect and then sometimes like a big pan, yeah, exactly,
you would boil. You you boil the sap down and
(08:42):
you're reducing it to something something thicker, but plastic change
this operation made much more efficient. It's funny. It almost
reminds me of those old uh I believe Tropicana orange
juice ads where it was just like a straw shoved
into the orange. The implication being that it's like it
comes you know, it's the freshness you can get without
sucking it straight from the orange. But it's about that
(09:03):
low tech even in the modern day. I mean, you're
literally shoving a thing into the tree that is then
pulling the draining the sap out into some receptacle. But yeah,
and Ben made a really really great point just before
we got into the tubing and everything, just that if
you mess up and you tapped the tree, you're wrong
or in the wrong place or too many times and
(09:25):
you lose that. Imagine you're losing forty years minimum of
effort to get that tree to where it needs to
be to even be tappable. Uh So that's why, like,
that's why it is such there's so much of an
art to it, um and a and and a science
to making it work. That Sweetie song is actually about
tapping in I was gonna ask Ben, is it because
(09:48):
it replenishes itself over time, like you have to give
like leave a period, you know of kind of rest
in between tapping so that the tap can be replenished
or is it a finite amount I would imagine it's
the former. Yeah, yeah, you're correct, it's the it's the former.
There's a finite amount of set. But to be clear,
no sugar maker is parasitic or vampiric here. They're not
(10:12):
draining these trees dry. It's almost like, for very crude analogy,
it's almost like they're giving blood. Like the process of
donating blood is meant to leave the donor healthy, so
like a really responsible vampire, like a very like an
ethical like the kind of vampire that shops at the
vampire equivalent of a co opera whole foods. Uh co
(10:35):
op whole Foods is no longer the best example. But
but part of the way they do this and keep
these healthy is also by limiting the the amount of
time per year when this when this tapping occurs, it
only takes place for about four to six weeks, so
(10:55):
think roughly a month and change during something that is
called adorably the sugar season, which I think is also
a good name for maybe not a band, but an album.
And this is still like we'll see, there's a lot
of limitation here, and the limitations placed on this process.
People argue for the good of the tree, but they're
(11:18):
also at the limb of the weather. It's there, there's
a ideal time to uh tap this tree, tap into
this tree, and most of these tapholes only give you
about ten gallons of sap throughout that period. So four
So thinking back to um, you know the attrition that
(11:41):
you have described, No, that means that we're talking four
tapholes over a period of rob four to six weeks,
making forty gallons of sap, making one gallon of maple syrup.
A ton of bo goes into this. Yeah, a ton
of work and not that much yield, right, And and
(12:03):
they're in lies this entire episode. Yeah, it's a fascinating process.
And we could spend some time, you know, especially um
for those of you all familiar with our old school
origins how stuff works. We would totally spend an hour
talking just exploring how cool this process is. But for
(12:26):
our purposes today, fellow conspiracy realists, it's just important to
know how much work goes into each one of those
little bottles. The industry today is surprisingly big. There's a
lot of there's a lot of money in maple. It
turns out by three this is gonna be worth the
maple syrup industry alone. It's gonna be worth one point
(12:47):
seven billion dollars. This story may be familiar to some
of us listening today because there was a Netflix documentary
that came out not too long ago, a great series
called Dirty Money, and one episode in season one of
Dirty Money, they discuss maple syrup in a way that's
related to this, it turns out officially because of all
(13:10):
the time dedicated to creating this, Uh, there is a
premium in price, but it's also only part of the
reason there's a premium of price anyway. Right now, when
the statistics you'll hear thrown around is accurate, but it
changes a little bit a year over year, a single
barrel of maple syrup would be worth around one hundred
(13:32):
dollars eight hundred dollars, which makes it currently more than
twenty times the price of a barrel of oil, which
is right now as we record about seventy three to
seventy four bucks. And that'll that'll change, but there maple
syrup has been more expensive than oil for a long
long time. Yeah, And it's a really great comparison because
(13:54):
Ben isn't joking or talking around it when he's saying
a barrel of this substance, the a barrel of oil
is the same as they're like the same barrels basically,
Um that that you can find maple in and and
oil in, and that also is very important to this story. Yeah, Yeah,
(14:15):
forty two gallons, that's how much a forty two US gallons,
that's that's the size of both of these kinds of barrels.
So this industry also gets further specialized because it's very localized.
Maples don't grow everywhere, maple syrups not made everywhere. In fact,
it's it's pretty much exclusively created in North America. The
(14:38):
biggest US manufacturer is Vermont. That stereotype is true. Vermont
is is is a very big maple syrup industry, at
least in the US, but that US behemoth is absolutely
dwarfed by Canada. That's where the real maple action go
(15:00):
is down. The province of Quebec specifically makes in excess
of seventy percent of the world's entire supply of maple syrup.
And this is why outfits like the Economists were investigative
reporters like Carol and Jarvis, who appears in Dirty Money,
have called Canada the Saudi Arabia of maple syrup. It's
(15:23):
not just the clever title, it's pretty accurate. It's all
intermesh with the oil industry. I love it. Yeah, And
most people outside of these very specific regions um that
specialized in producing this stuff UM or outside specific industries
that are associated don't really think about maple syrup. Um
(15:44):
until back in that is, when there was a story
that hit the press um where it had been discovered
that someone had pulled a heist. Been you refer to
it as an ocean's eleven level heist with your bag
man and your in sideman and all your other men.
Doesn't have to be a man, but you know, in
the parlance of heists, and this crew, um, if you will,
(16:08):
were involved in stealing thousands of tons um of the
stuff and making off with around eighteen points seven million
dollars Canadian which is around fifteen million US d um
worth of maple syrup. And if you were talking about
this around the water cooler, uh, it might have at
(16:29):
the time, like it did for most people. I imagine
strike you as a little bit funny. Um immediately when
you hear somebody stole maple syrup, that's right, because what
do you do with all of it? That's what you like.
Back in two thousand twelve, that was the immediate question.
It's like one of those highs where you know, uh,
(16:51):
I try not to say it's too often an air,
but I have a weird thing with dirigibles, and I
always joked about stealing a blim for an airship, and
the big the reason that's so humorous is because the
hell do you do with it? Yeah? Where you're gonna
put all that maple syrup? How do you how do
you explain that? How do you add you launder maple syrup?
(17:14):
How do you offense maple syrup? That's a good question, benum.
But at the end of the day, how is it
any different than any other valuable commodity? You know? Because
valuable it absolutely is. As you mentioned earlier. Uh, it
costs upwards of a little under two grand a barrel,
whereas oil, I think is only around seventy five seventy
(17:36):
six bucks. So I mean absolutely sticky brown gold is
what the stuff is. But um, you know chuckles aside,
when the story came through, there really is absolutely a dark,
uh presumably somewhat sticky underbelly to the world of maple syrup.
Because the story didn't just end up exposing these criminals
(17:56):
who did get caught and convicted, ultimately exposed something ounce,
something much deeper and arguably more sinister. Um, a multi
generational cartel like operation that spanned decades. Yeah, you see,
the economist and Jarvis didn't just say that Canada was
(18:17):
the Saudi Arabia maple syrup. They went a little further
and they said, this situation also has an opeque. Yeah,
there's a conspiracy of foot in the land of pancakes,
of waffles, folks, just like the stories of diamonds or
the early days of light bulbs. Turns out maple syrup
(18:38):
is run by a cartel. What are we talking about.
We'll tell you afterward from our sponsor. Here's where it
gets crazy. So let's let's talk just a second about opeq.
Uh Yeah, alright. OPEC is the organization of the petroleum
(19:04):
exporting countries you have. If you've, depending on the kind
of news you've read over the years or decades, you've
probably heard OPEC being brought up various times in the West.
And that's because OPEC can It makes for a very
convenient boogeyman, especially when when you get to oil wars
(19:26):
and fossil fuel prices. Because OPEC is what is known
as a cartel. Usually when we hear the word cartel,
we associate it with drugs, cocaina, you know what I mean,
Like this is uh, this is because we often hear
the terms together we don't hear things like banking cartel. Right,
(19:48):
and and even though the diamond cartel is very much real,
you like nine times out of ten when you hear
the word cartel described in the news, it's going to
be referring to drugs. But what it acts lead defines
is just this. Let's say that Matt Noel, Mission Control
and I all make I don't know, what's something fun
(20:10):
that we make some specific it's specific for kids. Okay,
we make so we make like that kind kind of
let's say it's like a branded kind of it's a
very specific kind of slime, like with gack. There we go,
So we make ghack. We make ghack. And what we
(20:30):
are the four largest manufacturers of ghack? And were your
company is called Ghakuta. Uh, it's not called Matt Ghack.
Well anyway, I we got we got lots of room
to play with this. So we are the four largest
manufacturers of ghack. And we say, hey, why are we
(20:52):
Why are we fighting with each other? You know what
I mean? Why? Why why are we all like living
living like dogs and popers? For a measly of a
small piece of pie, we could get together. We could
make the pie bigger and we could all profit off
of it. And what we would do then is well
be a group of suppliers or manufacturers and we would
(21:15):
conspire with each other. Literally would say, Okay, the price
of ghack no matter what, is always going to be
um arrested development reference is always going to be like
what what could it cost ten dollars? You know that's
what That's what we'll do. We'll do it the way
they did bananas. And then we would say, in addition
(21:37):
to that, the four of us are also going to cooperate,
whether through transparent legal means or through unethical illegal means,
to keep all those other dirty competitors out of the game.
You know, there's there's a there are a bunch of
independent producers of ghack, and we are going to destroy them.
(21:59):
So free market a cartel is not Yodo would say,
you know, a really great example of this isn't a
show that I've I've been rewatching recently, The wire Um
where there is a group of rival drug dealers who
are constantly at each other's throats and whoring and dropping
bodies in the streets, and then um, they they eventually
(22:20):
get together, pull their resources, use their influence to get
the best product and then share real estate. Um. And
then they also use that to vanquish any other competition
or if there is competition that's worth bringing into this
collusion or cartel type situation, they do that and just
absorb them. But it ultimately is about limiting competition and
(22:42):
about kind of the rising tide carrying all vessels, but
also not having any outsiders. Yeah, and in price fixing.
And I think just one minor thing we're missing with
the gack version that we're talking about here is that
with most cartels there's either natural resource or a resource
that is limited, there's limited access to Right. Our gag
(23:06):
is all organic exactly from the GA you're making. But yeah,
in the in the gag example, you would just it
would be more about the things needed to create the gag. Right.
So in this in Maples, the reason why it's important
or like almost like I would say, almost needed to
(23:27):
have a cartel like this, And I know that's a
little controversial, we'll get into it, but it's because there
is a limited amount of the stuff in circulation at
any given time, um, and controlling that the supply becomes
vital to the industry, Right, right, it becomes monopolistic, you know,
(23:48):
and the world of done about. Frank Herbert has an
excellent example of this with the spice. This is not
based on some sort of made up thing. The cartel
in question is called the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers.
But you know, the real name is in French because
it's kepaqua, it's usually referred to by the acronym f
(24:11):
p a q uh. The story of the organization is
interesting and dates all the way back to the nineteen fifties.
These guys have been active for a while. So over
in southern Quebec a group of remember the name sugar makers.
We're having a hard time because this is this is
hard work, just like farming. Uh. These folks are often
(24:33):
at the whims of the weather. They don't know what
may or may not affect the trees, and and sometimes
it's like active god level disasters. So they said, look,
we can no longer be at the whims of a market.
We have to be able to guarantee our survival, the
survival of our kids and our businesses. So we're gonna
get together and we're gonna vultron up will collectively market
(24:57):
our mapel syrup. This starts the nineteen fIF the eight
the idea catches on. It leads to the formation of
a larger group ultimately across the entirety of Quebec. And
since all they're they're typically called producers. All the sugar
makers in this fp a Q have worked together as
(25:21):
a cartel. They've set prices and they've also done something else,
they've set production quotas. That's the big problem that the
US historically had with OPEC. They would get mad at
OPEQ and UM. I had an old professor years ago
who said, that's a very nice person, but they said, uh,
(25:41):
opaque exists to stop the flow of oil and make
it expensive. And that was a little hot take because
it didn't seem like a good idea as a business model.
But it turns out it's a great idea as a
business model in some cases, especially if you want to
enrich um a all number of families that own all
(26:02):
the oil in the Middle East anyway, Yeah, or or
or dack tycoons like us. Hey, so so this is
this is again it's it's similar to OPEC. It's similar
to two Beers, which is the infamous diamond cartel, or
it's similar to the Phoebus cartel, which is the group
(26:23):
that back in the day purposefully made lightbulbs crappier. Yeah,
and also just hey, don't sleep on the diamond, the
Beers diamond thing that we I think we just put
out the classic episode on diamonds. Don't sleep on that.
Check Lauren and question, I didn't know the answer, but
(26:44):
just hypothetically speaking, a cartel isn't inherently illegal. I mean,
there certainly are illegal cartels the traffic and illegal goods.
But to me, the whole purpose of a cartel is
to limit competition and essentially create a monopoly. So is
it just kind of like a loophole that allows for
a legal monopoly of some sort? And why aren't these
challenged more often by you know, regulators? One A great question. Yes,
(27:08):
the answer, as we'll find, verges on the philosophical points,
but without sounding two cynical, what I would say, and
I welcome disagreements with this, what I would say is
that the issue of legality ultimately becomes just an issue
of who controls the mechanisms of the state. That's why
(27:28):
different countries have different laws. So like, if you so
so like, somebody may consider the activities of a cartel
domestically or internationally illegal, but if that cartel is powerful enough,
if they have enough access enough what you would call
juice in the wire or suction in the wire, suction
(27:51):
industry makes a lot of money, right, or if their
industry has already been purchased through perhaps unethical means by
the rulers of a country, then they get to decide
what they think is legal or illegal. So that's why
we have these legal cartels. And then you know, there's
(28:12):
a greater good argument that comes out, and sometimes it's
a good faith argument, but the the idea here is
the idea of what these guys are doing. This group
is legal. The government of Canada has sanctioned this, but
not everybody agrees because there's very much of who watches
(28:33):
the watchman kind of situation anytime you talk about a cartel,
because you could ask people throughout mining operations run by
de beers what they think of the cartel's activities, and um, yes,
sometimes being ethical and being legal are not always the
(28:57):
same thing, you know. Unfortunately. Yeah, And again, like we
were making these comparisons because it is the best, These
are the best ways to actually make these connections and
talk about these things. But you know, the mining operations
and some of the horrors, they are very different from
you know, sugar makers tapping trees. Right, But and and
there's also I mean they're there. That's the thing. We
(29:19):
we love the complexity of a topic like this because
it's it's not apples to apples or maples to maples
in every one of these um and I I'm only
saying this to point out that a lot of sugar makers,
and from what I've seen in the stats and some
(29:39):
of the stuff that was shown in that Dirty Money episode,
the producers and the sugar makers, the vast majority of
them are down with this cartel because it helps them, individually, uh,
make sure that they're able to sell their product at
a good enough price, to to get loans right, and
(30:02):
to be able to make enough enough profit off of
something that could be not profitable. Yeah, it's not like
these it's not like these folks who are in this,
in this industry, whether they are opposed to the cartel
or whether they support it, it's not like they're billionaires,
you know what I mean. They're they're like anybody else
(30:22):
with a job, trying to get by and in, you know,
in the opaque example. It's interesting is if you were
a member of OPEC, you would see clear advantages, especially
when you were cognizant of the way that colonial powers
absolutely exploited any place with oil for as long as
(30:46):
they could, you know what I mean. So it is
seen as um a protective, defensive move, which is why
it is called protection is m So this like like
to that point right now, this organization is legal. It's
a fantastic question. We'll get into the philosophy of the
(31:06):
of the problem later. But from the perspective of the folks,
the many members and supporters of what is sometimes just
called the Federation for shorthand uh, this group is taking
necessary actions to ensure that all important price stability, because otherwise,
if you're just out there independently, what if what if
(31:30):
the weather doesn't work out? What if something terrible happens
to the trees in your sugar brush, which is what
the collection and copes of trees being tapped is called
see because they're all like words with sugar in them,
so we can't just list them all. I don't know,
well and ben and also what if what if you
(31:50):
produced too much. Right, What if you've got too much
stuff and you don't have a buyer for all of
this syrup you've produced, right, Yeah, syrup sir plus could
be as bad as a syrup shortage. This this leads
to that that quota system, because the Federation doesn't just
dictate the price at which syrup has to be sold
(32:13):
in Quebec. They also dictate how much you, as a
sugar maker can make each sugaring season. So like if
we did that with our Gack cartel, then we would
be telling, you know, like, let's say we all agreed
that we were gonna sell we were all only gonna
(32:35):
sell ten million tons of gag units. There we go,
that's a little better. Yeah, ten million units each of ghack.
And then let's say Mission control has a bumper year,
his gag trees are doing awesome, and he's like, I've
made twenty million units at ghack and then we say, well, sorry, bro,
(32:59):
that's over your quote to uh so you cannot sell it.
As a matter of fact, you have to give it
to us. That's what happens in the maple syrup situation.
If you have a great year, no matter who you are,
if you have a great year and you harvest more
than the allowed quota, you cannot sell that excess syrup
the way you would want to, because it might end
(33:20):
up driving down that price and creating a surplus. Instead,
you have to ship it to you not something called
the global strategic reserve of maple syrup. Yet again, the
oil comparison holds. You know what I mean, the US
has a global reserve of oil or strategic reserve. Yeah. Now,
forgive me if I'm incorrect here. My understanding is that
(33:43):
it's not them just handing it over like for free.
They would they would get payment for not it's not
donating but essentially giving their syrup to the preserve. Yes, yeah,
And the key issue there is the timing. So let's
look at the other case. So if there's a low
production year, the Federation taps get it uh that reserve
(34:08):
and they release a controlled amount of syrup into like
out into the world. And the circulation, yes, they circulate
the syrup. And some people love this setup because again,
like like Matt was saying earlier, this makes it much
much easier to predict how future years will play out,
which is huge, hugely important. But other people had a
(34:32):
problem with this other maple syrup producers. Uh not, just
like outside observers with some economic policy acts to grind.
There are people who saying, I've been making maple syrup
my whole life. This maple syrup operation has been our
family for generations. We want to take a cue from
(34:53):
Sleetwood Mac and go our own way. The Federation wasn't
really cool with this in two thousand. In the early
two thousandsol here it called two thousand or two thousand four.
But in the early two thousands they did this thing
where they created an exclusive selling agency, meaning that no
matter who you were, if you were in Quebec and
(35:16):
you're you're in the syrup game, you you can't sell
like directly to a supermarket, you know what I mean.
You can't make a deal with like a restaurant chain
to just carry your your syrup. You have to sell
it to the Federation at that agreed upon price and
then they will basically run the rest of the sales
(35:36):
from there. So if you didn't like this and you
wanted to sell things yourself, you ended up putting syrup
on an actual black market. Wow. So this is to
say that any syrup in the syrup pile at your
local you know, grocery store chain, whether it's the like
twelve nine bottle seemingly small batch family operation on a situation,
(36:01):
or whether it's your you know, whatever they like. I
don't even know what the most mainstream syrup d jur
is today. They're all going through this system. Otherwise, No,
seven seventy right now, if you if you're walking in
a grocery store where any store selling maple syrup almost
(36:23):
anywhere in the world, in excess of seventy of it
is coming not just from Canada but from this place,
which means unless you're in like uh syrup black market
or unless there's like a black market supermarket, some syrup
comes from the United States, obviously, I mean like that's
so that's that's the issue here. Well, And a lot
(36:45):
of syrup you will find for sale wherever you live
is going to be corn syrup that's got some color
in it and may have some maple flavoring and or
maple syrup involved, but it's mostly corn. But it can't
say pure no, no, I can't say here, and there
is a premium on organic maple syrup, but largely like
these this organization has the heft to swing around and
(37:12):
to get its way. This is where stuff started clamping down.
And for people who are big free market proponents, this
is where it becomes a little bit of a horror
story because all producers in the area, all sugar makers
in the area, are required to sell their product directly
to this organization, whether or not they want to. So
(37:36):
it's not it's not quite the same thing as like
a union. You can't opt in, right, there is there
is one exception, which is you can sell small amounts
of your syrup directly from your farm, which are called
I love this sugar checks que two B fifty twos. Uh.
(37:58):
You can, so you can all your own stuff two
people who like happened by right, And you can also
if you want, you can sell the supermarkets as long
as you give the federation they're cut, which is twelve
off the top. It's not as big of a cut
as say Google takes off YouTube, but still twelve cent
(38:21):
makes a big difference in people's lives. As a matter
of fact, you know, let's let's talk a little bit
more about the money in this relationship, because that's where
that's where the problems with cartel's usually come into play,
and that's usually where you see like the if not
conspiracy inruption, that's where you're going to see the conflict.
Es estimates right now, our best estimate is that the Federation,
(38:47):
the cartel takes the equivalent of eleven cents US off
of every pound of produced. So let's just do the
math here. One gallon of syrup contains eleven pounds, so
a dollar twenty one US per gallon of syrup. Basically, uh.
And interestingly, and I guess kind of rationally, that money
(39:10):
that the Federation takes off, according to them, goes to
the promotion of maple maple syrup as a thing. It
is like, right, we're promoting the industry itself by having
this this group over like deployed on top of it.
And also in research, how can we tap these trees better?
And how can we store this maple for longer? And
(39:34):
what scientifically proven advantages does maple syrup have over say
something something others, some other sweet substance that people might
buy in a store like honey. So this makes sense,
and if you are a sugar maker, you also pay
an administrative fee to this organization. But again, the people
(39:55):
who are running this organization, staffing at working for it.
There they're going to say, look, we're making ends meet,
but please stop calling us, stop calling us like tycoons
and stuff, because we're just we're trying to do what's
best for everybody. The thing is again for their involvement,
(40:15):
whether consensual or non consensual. These producers are paid in installments.
So like going back to our surplus, your example, you
send in, you've exceeded your quota. How dare you be
good at what you do? Right? How dare you be uh,
you know, extraordinary what you're doing? Then you will be
(40:38):
paid for the syrup that has to be shipped off
to the strategic reserve. But you're paid on kind of
a layaway plan. And this has led some unhappy syrup
makers to say that they've they've said they're waiting like
months or in some cases years for these payments to
come in. And if you are paying other bill or
(41:00):
costs associated with keeping the lights on, etcetera, etcetera, then
you can't really go to your utility company and say
I'm waiting on the syrup money. I'll get to you
next year. Fingers crossed knock on maplewood so yeah, and
you can totally see why the black market feels like
(41:20):
it may be a viable option for that individual, like
you said, who needs to make payments to other people
while they're waiting on the other one. But there certainly
are you know, critics of this system from the on
the producer side, And one particularly vocal producer who was
fighting against f pack f p a q UM is
(41:41):
Angel grenier Um, who was kind of tired of the
whole set up. She was sick of the cartel pushing
her around and decided to take on a direct sales
model where she sold her syrup right to a distributor
bypassing the f p Q entirely. And the he's got involved.
(42:01):
All of her stock that she had warehouse was seized
and she was slapped with a crippling five hundred thousand
dollar fine. Um very much seems like they were trying
to make an example of her. So this is where
we start to really see problems brewing. And Ben I
believe this is one of the primary interviewees on that
(42:22):
Dirty Money episode. Yeah, this this person who's very outspoken
and kind of leading a fight against the cartel. It's
it's a fascinating story. Recommend you check out that episode
if you can, just to to get the background on it.
But we're gonna we're gonna continue on here because that
was just the beginning of the issues at hand. Here, Yes,
(42:45):
trouble was on the horizon. Well, pause for word from
our sponsor. We'll return with more, unless, of course, Big
Maple gets us. We've returned yet. So Grenier is often
(43:07):
quoted she's you'll you'll find her mention and her story
mentioned multiple local, regional, and international articles about this situation.
She has been her case when all the way to
the Canadian Supreme Court. By the way, just give you
a sense of how how important this was, and all
(43:30):
of this, this uh, this boiling, massive cultural sap. This
is the context in which the maple syrup heist occurs,
and from a cinematic perspective, it's pretty impressive. So the
reserve calling a singular thing might be a little misleading
(43:52):
to people because it's located in a series of three
warehouses in rural Quebec, and over the course of twenty
eleven and this group of conspirators stole thousands and thousands
of tons of maple syrup and it was a slow
motion operation. You know, they Federation themselves only found out
(44:15):
about this when they had that. It's another moment from
the heist review, like the High Story, which is just
a neat montage of tropes. Basically, uh, the there's always
the moment in the heist where there's the big reveal.
You know, someone opens the safe and it's gone. It
turns out that the cops were also working with the robbers.
(44:35):
And then you know the main like the bad guy
whomever in this case, Um, the Federation doesn't see themselves
to the bad guy, but you know, like the heist
crew probably saw them as the bad guy. There's this
moment if you could picture Oceans levin Quebec, where someone
from the Federation opens one of these syrup barrels and says,
(44:55):
holy oh no, that's that's water, that's not syrup. How
much did they get us for? And they found out
that this was easily like a quarter of the Syrup
Strategic Reserve, which means it's easily quarter of the world
saved up supply. And yeah, the police were involved, this
(45:17):
was a huge crime. In just a few days in
December of Canadian police ended up arresting like seventeen different
people who had some connection with the plot, and that
was on the orders of this cartel which continues today.
And again we can't emphasize this enough. We're not we're
(45:40):
not calling them villains. It does have ardent supporters and
it does have die hard opponents, and we have to remember,
as silly as a headline might sound, these are real people.
This maple syrup stuff is not their hobby. They get
up every day and think about it because it's their livelihood.
And Grenier is a famous example, but there are other
(46:01):
sugar makers who have been slapped with fines, huge fines.
They've also had their syrup, the stuff they made, seized
by this organization for going outside of its its rules.
And that's why you'll hear people like Grene say the
federation says they own my trees they make. They treat
(46:22):
it like it's their property. Uh. Really interesting article by
a reporter named Ross Merrowitz who said that the cartel
may accidentally, to a degree, be working against its own
interest because their rules may be strengthening competition from other
provinces in Canada and non Canadian competition in the US.
(46:46):
And I think Ross actually has a you know, a
pretty compelling case there, because if you can get look
if the reason why I bought this particular maple syrup
was because it was like five or six dollar is
less than the other ones, not the not the fully
like single barreled ones you were mentioning their and all,
but you know the maple syrups that existed where I
(47:09):
went to buy syrup, and it's still on maple syrup,
but it's significantly less expensive. And if you if you've
got competitors out there that are that are able to
have stuff on the market that is not at the
prices you're fixing that that are lower than those prices,
then you could be in very big trouble, especially if
you get them to big you know, distributors like um,
(47:32):
I don't know here in Atlanta, like a Kroger or
a Walmart or a Whole Foods or something like that. Yeah,
the Canadians apply in the cartel itself could be in trouble.
I gotta imagine too, Like I mean, there's this thing
called oh gosh, it's not the not AOC, what's that's
the lawmaker. But there's an organization in France that regulates
(47:53):
like what products can be given what names like for example,
true French champagne can only be called Champagne if it
comes from the Champagne region of France. UM does this
Cartel also UM govern kind of purity claims, like if
you're calling something pure maple syrup or even just pure
(48:14):
maple syrup, like in terms of how to use the
wire terms how much it can be stepped on, you know,
because I imagine that some maple syrup is diluted in
some way so that you can make your yield go further.
I don't have specifics on that. Uh. I would just
say that in something like this product that I have here,
(48:36):
the only ingredient is maple syrup. So I've seen others
that are like pure maple syrup and then extra stuff
or something like that. Um, but I don't know the
naming conventions and how they're applied. Yeah, because it may
be sold not directly to the end consumer, but it
might be sold to a company that then makes something
(48:59):
that's a lends somehow of the syrups. So it's it's
interesting because they're trying to they're trying It's phrased in
a very optimistic way by the Federation They're like, we
want to take place, we want to participate in this
expanding market. But it's, um, it's not inaccurate, because the
(49:21):
production in Quebec has increased, you know, year over year
for a decade. It increased from two thousand seven and
twenty sev. But it's also understandable how if you're making
maple syrup in Quebec you might feel these rules, however
well intentioned, hurt you more than they help you. Because
(49:43):
imagine you're seeing some you know, uh, some guy who's
like a weird equivalent of reverse carpet bagging out from Vermont,
crosses over the border and the same rules don't apply
to them. They can sell the Vermont Sarah all the
livelong day. And so these other, these Kabbaqua sugar makers,
(50:08):
the ones who are opposed to the federation, which again, um,
the research that we saw seems to indicate there in
the minority. But these folks feel that they may have
traded one disadvantage for another. You know, they're saying, look,
is hedging against unpredictable weather. Is it worth knowing that
(50:29):
I have to wait for months or years to get paid?
Is it worth knowing that I can't do what I
want with the trees that I or my family have
spent forty years minimum growing. Uh. Supporters of the end,
the staff of the Federation, people like Simon Trepanner, the
(50:50):
executive director, they disagree with being characterized in some shady behemith.
You know. Again, they're they're not. They wouldn't say they're
like Tycoon, certainly not oil country level wealthy. They claim
that their first and foremost concern is to represent people
who actually make maple syrup. But here we get to
(51:12):
the end because if you are outside of the industry
and you are thinking about this, it may represent a
much older conundrum, which is the philosophical conflict between a
controlled market and a free market. And this is a
very This conversation is cyclical. In the mainstream. It comes
(51:36):
up pretty often, you know, and sometimes it's phrased in
very very simplistic terms like someone's quoting Iron Rand at
you or whatever. But the real question here is what
what would be the benefit if there's a syrup free market,
(51:58):
if there's an unfettered sea free for all, which is
weird image out of context, would that would that be
better for these individuals or would it instead lead back
to like crazy fluctuations and results in you know, the
surplus as you describe mad or people having to find
like close down their family sugar shacks. What would happen?
(52:20):
Who knows? And there's uncertainty in there, right, And that's
kind of maybe the whole point. I really want to
look at who does this benefit the most by following
the money? So the federation itself we talked about, they
get eleven cents per pound of maple syrup produced, so
the federation gets that benefit. UM. They also get benefit
(52:40):
when they expand, so if they add more producers they
can they continue to make that eleven cents per pound. Right.
So in the Federation made a move they said they're
gonna add five million new taps. So that's like taps
not necessarily an individual tree, but individual taps in trees
to it's existing forty three million taps. And the goal
(53:03):
there is too really just more fully participate in that
larger market that we talked about UM, And what they
really want to see is an increased production overall by
thirty percent of so for you know, until or whatever
if they can, they want to do that, right, And
(53:25):
what I'm what my understanding is controlling these prices guaranteeing
that a sugar maker is going to make this money.
The biggest benefit is that the bank knows that if
you're producing maple, they will back you up with with
money for loans to either continue your business or expand
(53:45):
your business, because they are guaranteed to get paid back
at least some amount, because you are guaranteed to be
making money by this cartel. And and if if the banks,
if the banks in the cartel are like, yeah, we're
all good here, we can expand we'll give you money
to expand, the cartel's making money on the top of
(54:05):
the bank is lending out tons of money, that's making
tons of interest on all these loans. Everybody's like doing great,
and the sugar makers are making you know, whatever the
prices are that the cartel says they're going to be. Uh,
I don't know. I mean, it feels like the banks
are actually winning. And I mean the banks are usually
(54:27):
waiting and a lot of a lot of things unfortunately,
but but they're designed to write. So that's that's a
very great point about controlled market. You know, it does
does this collective action you could call it, to control
the quebecs spice. Does it ultimately make it easier for
(54:49):
people to succeed? Or is it really hurting more people
than it helps? Or who is it really helping? To
your to your question, that's that's something again that we're
not making a call on, but a lot of bowl are,
a lot of people are trying to answer that question,
and for others and for me as well. You know,
one thing that really stuck out was the concept of consent.
(55:13):
Consent informed consent is is a huge, hugely important thing
in every aspect of your life, professional and personal, and
it's a key factor. So would the federation, I would ask,
would they get less criticism if they didn't mandate or
force people to participate? So again, while these questions, the
(55:34):
tricky thing with these questions is that they all verge
into prognostication and philosophy. You can't really predict the future
unless you're unless dark is a little further ahead than
I think. And as a result, right now these questions
are not easy to answer. It does go to show that,
(55:54):
just like in the case of the Great Cheese Spiracy,
though even the most in knock with seeming things can
have a conspiracy behind them, and so with this, we
want to ask you folks, First off, waffles or pancakes.
When I'm not letting it go, I I gotta tell
you I respect your decision. If you're a pancake person,
(56:16):
more pancakes for you. But while you're thinking about that,
ask yourself. Should maple producers be required to join this federation?
Is it helping or hurting them? Overall? With this heist
still have occurred if the federation didn't exist. I mean,
let us know, and let us know if you'd like
to hear more stories about food conspiracies. Though, be warned, friends,
(56:37):
some of these stories are much much darker than this one.
Cough cough, palm oil cough cough, chocolate cough cough. Is
that a subtle enough hint? You guys don't even don't
even look into the gack industry that Oh god, it's bad.
Oh no, we can't. We've since it's hired. Hi, we've
(57:00):
been doing a podcast for fun, but we're really we're
ghackman at the end of the gackmananaman? How how can
how can people find us? How can they tell us
these things? They just shout out into the void into
the sky. Yeah, so Yeah, what is your what cartel
are you associated with? Tell us about it? Blow the
(57:21):
old whistle. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook
and YouTube where we are conspiracy stuff. On Instagram we
are conspiracy stuff show. Oh and I forgot to point
out the trees do not get paid. But if you're
if there's something, uh, if there's something you do want
(57:42):
to take away from this with the idea of tree rights.
Here in nearby Athens, Georgia, there is a tree that
owns itself. Wow, that's it. That's a that's you can
find that online too. You know what, the tree these
maples get paid in love because as we said, the
sugar those the sugar makers, they gotta take care of them.
(58:04):
Trees worth it? I don't know is love worth it?
I don't know, God, what's love got to do with it?
Love always friends away and you can find you can
find a way to contact us that doesn't depend on
the internet. Should you like to give us a call,
We have a phone number just for you and our
fellow conspiracy realist. It is one eight three three st
(58:27):
d w y t K. You'll hear a message. You'll
have three minutes. They belong to you. Let us know
what's on your mind, give yourself a sick nickname, bonus
arbitrary points for the nickname in fact, and most importantly,
let us know if we can use your voice and
or message on air. Equally, most importantly, don't feel like
(58:48):
you need to edit yourself. If your story needs more
than three minutes, If you have links you want to send,
if you have additional information, go ahead and write to
us directly. We read every single email we get. All
you have to do is shoot us a lied online
where we are. Look, I know, I know. This is
the part where we're going to tell you the email address.
(59:08):
We always do it every every episode. We're gonna tell
you the email address. But before that, we're recording this
on September two one and the Matrix Resurrections trailer just
came out, and I know you're excited. I'm excited. You
said you weren't going to watch it. Oh no, I'm
gonna watch every bit of it seven times in the theater.
(59:31):
I don't care if I've got to wear a full
Bubba Boy outfit. I'm watching the end of theater the trailer.
You're gonna watch the trailer that many times? The movie
the movie itself. It's happening. By the way, our email
addresses conspiracy and I hire radio dot com. Yeah, stuff
(01:00:06):
they don't want you to know. Is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
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you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission controlled decands. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. You can find corruption and conspiracy
in the oddest places. Longtime listeners, you're well aware of this. Uh.
(00:48):
And today we are traveling up to the land of
our lovely northern neighbors. We're traveling to Canada through the
power the mind, right, the theater of imagination. And in
this episode we're exploring a bizarre international well, you could
call it a conspiracy, you could call it an industry.
(01:12):
Some people, rightly or wrongly, are convinced it is a
scam or even racketeering. UH. And this is his story
that may well travel all the way up to your
own breakfast table. No kidding. Before we do the big
reveal and get into this, I have one very important
(01:33):
question for you. Knowl and for you, Matt, and for
everyone listening along at home, waffles or pancakes if you
had to choose one. Oh, you know, I like a
waffle because of the little divits just hold the syrups
so nicely. They're like little syrup cups. You know. I
would have said waffle. But the other day I had
pecan pancakes or pecan pancakes if you're nasty, and they
(01:56):
were incredible. And I used this very bottle allegedly maple syrup,
and it was delicious. You wish on the side, Matt,
I didn't you see the front. I didn't want to
show you the actual company. Yeah, okay, well it checks out.
(02:19):
You can see you can see the name here the Yeah,
I myself am a waffle person because of the surface
area conundrum that you mentioned earlier, or it's a feature
not a bug, also because of the ingredients. But the
crux of today's story, fellow conspiracy realist, is maple syrup. Yes,
(02:40):
you are listening to a show about critical thinking applied
to conspiracy theories, and yes, this episode is about maple syrup.
Trust us worth it problems. So here are the facts.
If you're like most people, You've heard of maple syrup, right,
you've heard of it. It's not it's not new to
your human experience. It's made from this substance called xylem
(03:03):
sap and it comes primarily from three types of trees
that are all maples. Uh. The big the big dog
in the game is sugar maple. But you will also
see people uh ultimately creating maple syrup from red and
black maple trees. It's not a new idea. Like a
(03:24):
lot of things on this continent. Indigenous people had learned
the trick of of this thousands and thousands of years ago.
They already knew how to take this slightly sweet sap
and turn it into syrup. And the process that these
earlier people discovered or created continues today. It's a really
(03:46):
neat marriage of art and science, and it's something that
I think a lot of people don't think about. Like
when if you live in many parts of the US, uh,
you may not even find real maple syrup. Often you
may go for the much more affordable table syrup, which
is not not the legit maple syrup. But if you're
(04:08):
you're in certain regions of this continent, particularly the eastern
northeastern seaboard right Canada, UH and New England. Then it
would be tremendously insulting to serve table syrup to your
loved ones, your friends. They would think, oh, okay, Mr
cheap stuff over here has decided that we are acquaintances
(04:32):
and not yeah, and and like it can seriously be
seen as an insult. And that's because they are very
different things. The I think to set this up, we
need to talk a little bit about the process of
creating this stuff, because so much work goes into it.
And when you understand how much work goes into it,
(04:54):
you can understand a little bit of why maple syrup
is such a big deal to some people. Okay, so
let's talk about sap. That's what we're gonna talk about, uh,
because you need a lot of it to make maple syrup.
The sap is almost like water in terms of the
makeup of the product. It is an incredibly thin um
(05:17):
substance that contains about two sucross, so it makes it sweet,
and about thirty gallons of sap is what it takes
to make it just a single gallon of maple syrup um.
And while of course the sap is the key ingredient
in the process. UM. It also requires another key ingredient,
which is time. UM. You have to have. You know,
(05:39):
you can't grow a tree overnight. A tree needs to
be healthy and it needs to be at least around
ten inches in diameter before it can be tapped UM,
which is exactly what it sounds like. You you know,
stick a device into the tree that then sucks out
the sap or at least allows you to drain the
tree of that soup. UM. And it typically takes a
tree around forty years to reach that kind of size. Yeah,
(06:04):
and it's pretty amazing. The process really is amazing. If
you watch some videos online about it and seeing especially
if it's a larger operation with a lot of maple
trees that have been tapped, and just watch looking at
the lines of of sap that just you know, slowly
drained from the tree into a collection area. It's it's
pretty cool. It's fascinating because you could tap a younger
(06:29):
or smaller tree, but it would have it would have
tough effects on the health of the tree, which is
super important. That's why we say it takes about forty
years because you're waiting for it to reach that size,
and for a large tree, if it's large enough, you
could have multiple taps on the tree. There's a lot
of really cool terminology here that I've just sort of
(06:53):
unapologetically peppered through because it's it's a lot to take
it all at once, but think of it this way.
So the people who tap the trees, they are called
sugar makers, which I think is tremendously sweet on several levels.
And they they're part of where the art and the
science really meet. To do this successfully, they need to
(07:14):
have a very deep understanding of each tree, like they
tend to know its history. They know if they had
any like problems with bugs or some kind of you know,
um rot got to it, and they take immense, immense
pains not to do any lasting harm because if everything
(07:34):
goes well, these trees can be tapped again and again
multiple times over a long period of time, like a
century or more. And and Matt, I'd love to hear
a little more about that sap collection process because it
changed over time, right oh yeah, before the invention of
(07:58):
I guess modern plastic and uh, you know, just some innovation.
The way you would tap an old maple back in
the day is you would have you would do the
thing you have to get a hole into the tree itself.
But before it was just this kind of wooden like
a wooden tube let's say that would come out like
a spout almost or uh that just kind of goes
(08:21):
down and his angle down, and then you'd hang a
bucket onto that wooden piece, or at least you'd get
a bucket very close to where that wooden pieces it's
actually tapping the tree. That bucket would fill up, and
then you take the bucket over dump it into wherever
you collect and then sometimes like a big pan, yeah, exactly,
you would boil. You you boil the sap down and
(08:42):
you're reducing it to something something thicker, but plastic change
this operation made much more efficient. It's funny. It almost
reminds me of those old uh I believe Tropicana orange
juice ads where it was just like a straw shoved
into the orange. The implication being that it's like it
comes you know, it's the freshness you can get without
sucking it straight from the orange. But it's about that
(09:03):
low tech even in the modern day. I mean, you're
literally shoving a thing into the tree that is then
pulling the draining the sap out into some receptacle. But yeah,
and Ben made a really really great point just before
we got into the tubing and everything, just that if
you mess up and you tapped the tree, you're wrong
or in the wrong place or too many times and
(09:25):
you lose that. Imagine you're losing forty years minimum of
effort to get that tree to where it needs to
be to even be tappable. Uh So that's why, like,
that's why it is such there's so much of an
art to it, um and a and and a science
to making it work. That Sweetie song is actually about
tapping in I was gonna ask Ben, is it because
(09:48):
it replenishes itself over time, like you have to give
like leave a period, you know of kind of rest
in between tapping so that the tap can be replenished
or is it a finite amount I would imagine it's
the former. Yeah, yeah, you're correct, it's the it's the former.
There's a finite amount of set. But to be clear,
no sugar maker is parasitic or vampiric here. They're not
(10:12):
draining these trees dry. It's almost like, for very crude analogy,
it's almost like they're giving blood. Like the process of
donating blood is meant to leave the donor healthy, so
like a really responsible vampire, like a very like an
ethical like the kind of vampire that shops at the
vampire equivalent of a co opera whole foods. Uh co
(10:35):
op whole Foods is no longer the best example. But
but part of the way they do this and keep
these healthy is also by limiting the the amount of
time per year when this when this tapping occurs, it
only takes place for about four to six weeks, so
(10:55):
think roughly a month and change during something that is
called adorably the sugar season, which I think is also
a good name for maybe not a band, but an album.
And this is still like we'll see, there's a lot
of limitation here, and the limitations placed on this process.
People argue for the good of the tree, but they're
(11:18):
also at the limb of the weather. It's there, there's
a ideal time to uh tap this tree, tap into
this tree, and most of these tapholes only give you
about ten gallons of sap throughout that period. So four
So thinking back to um, you know the attrition that
(11:41):
you have described, No, that means that we're talking four
tapholes over a period of rob four to six weeks,
making forty gallons of sap, making one gallon of maple syrup.
A ton of bo goes into this. Yeah, a ton
of work and not that much yield, right, And and
(12:03):
they're in lies this entire episode. Yeah, it's a fascinating process.
And we could spend some time, you know, especially um
for those of you all familiar with our old school
origins how stuff works. We would totally spend an hour
talking just exploring how cool this process is. But for
(12:26):
our purposes today, fellow conspiracy realists, it's just important to
know how much work goes into each one of those
little bottles. The industry today is surprisingly big. There's a
lot of there's a lot of money in maple. It
turns out by three this is gonna be worth the
maple syrup industry alone. It's gonna be worth one point
(12:47):
seven billion dollars. This story may be familiar to some
of us listening today because there was a Netflix documentary
that came out not too long ago, a great series
called Dirty Money, and one episode in season one of
Dirty Money, they discuss maple syrup in a way that's
related to this, it turns out officially because of all
(13:10):
the time dedicated to creating this, Uh, there is a
premium in price, but it's also only part of the
reason there's a premium of price anyway. Right now, when
the statistics you'll hear thrown around is accurate, but it
changes a little bit a year over year, a single
barrel of maple syrup would be worth around one hundred
(13:32):
dollars eight hundred dollars, which makes it currently more than
twenty times the price of a barrel of oil, which
is right now as we record about seventy three to
seventy four bucks. And that'll that'll change, but there maple
syrup has been more expensive than oil for a long
long time. Yeah, And it's a really great comparison because
(13:54):
Ben isn't joking or talking around it when he's saying
a barrel of this substance, the a barrel of oil
is the same as they're like the same barrels basically,
Um that that you can find maple in and and
oil in, and that also is very important to this story. Yeah, Yeah,
(14:15):
forty two gallons, that's how much a forty two US gallons,
that's that's the size of both of these kinds of barrels.
So this industry also gets further specialized because it's very localized.
Maples don't grow everywhere, maple syrups not made everywhere. In fact,
it's it's pretty much exclusively created in North America. The
(14:38):
biggest US manufacturer is Vermont. That stereotype is true. Vermont
is is is a very big maple syrup industry, at
least in the US, but that US behemoth is absolutely
dwarfed by Canada. That's where the real maple action go
(15:00):
is down. The province of Quebec specifically makes in excess
of seventy percent of the world's entire supply of maple syrup.
And this is why outfits like the Economists were investigative
reporters like Carol and Jarvis, who appears in Dirty Money,
have called Canada the Saudi Arabia of maple syrup. It's
(15:23):
not just the clever title, it's pretty accurate. It's all
intermesh with the oil industry. I love it. Yeah, And
most people outside of these very specific regions um that
specialized in producing this stuff UM or outside specific industries
that are associated don't really think about maple syrup. Um
(15:44):
until back in that is, when there was a story
that hit the press um where it had been discovered
that someone had pulled a heist. Been you refer to
it as an ocean's eleven level heist with your bag
man and your in sideman and all your other men.
Doesn't have to be a man, but you know, in
the parlance of heists, and this crew, um, if you will,
(16:08):
were involved in stealing thousands of tons um of the
stuff and making off with around eighteen points seven million
dollars Canadian which is around fifteen million US d um
worth of maple syrup. And if you were talking about
this around the water cooler, uh, it might have at
(16:29):
the time, like it did for most people. I imagine
strike you as a little bit funny. Um immediately when
you hear somebody stole maple syrup, that's right, because what
do you do with all of it? That's what you like.
Back in two thousand twelve, that was the immediate question.
It's like one of those highs where you know, uh,
(16:51):
I try not to say it's too often an air,
but I have a weird thing with dirigibles, and I
always joked about stealing a blim for an airship, and
the big the reason that's so humorous is because the
hell do you do with it? Yeah? Where you're gonna
put all that maple syrup? How do you how do
you explain that? How do you add you launder maple syrup?
(17:14):
How do you offense maple syrup? That's a good question, benum.
But at the end of the day, how is it
any different than any other valuable commodity? You know? Because
valuable it absolutely is. As you mentioned earlier. Uh, it
costs upwards of a little under two grand a barrel,
whereas oil, I think is only around seventy five seventy
(17:36):
six bucks. So I mean absolutely sticky brown gold is
what the stuff is. But um, you know chuckles aside,
when the story came through, there really is absolutely a dark,
uh presumably somewhat sticky underbelly to the world of maple syrup.
Because the story didn't just end up exposing these criminals
(17:56):
who did get caught and convicted, ultimately exposed something ounce,
something much deeper and arguably more sinister. Um, a multi
generational cartel like operation that spanned decades. Yeah, you see,
the economist and Jarvis didn't just say that Canada was
(18:17):
the Saudi Arabia maple syrup. They went a little further
and they said, this situation also has an opeque. Yeah,
there's a conspiracy of foot in the land of pancakes,
of waffles, folks, just like the stories of diamonds or
the early days of light bulbs. Turns out maple syrup
(18:38):
is run by a cartel. What are we talking about.
We'll tell you afterward from our sponsor. Here's where it
gets crazy. So let's let's talk just a second about opeq.
Uh Yeah, alright. OPEC is the organization of the petroleum
(19:04):
exporting countries you have. If you've, depending on the kind
of news you've read over the years or decades, you've
probably heard OPEC being brought up various times in the West.
And that's because OPEC can It makes for a very
convenient boogeyman, especially when when you get to oil wars
(19:26):
and fossil fuel prices. Because OPEC is what is known
as a cartel. Usually when we hear the word cartel,
we associate it with drugs, cocaina, you know what I mean,
Like this is uh, this is because we often hear
the terms together we don't hear things like banking cartel. Right,
(19:48):
and and even though the diamond cartel is very much real,
you like nine times out of ten when you hear
the word cartel described in the news, it's going to
be referring to drugs. But what it acts lead defines
is just this. Let's say that Matt Noel, Mission Control
and I all make I don't know, what's something fun
(20:10):
that we make some specific it's specific for kids. Okay,
we make so we make like that kind kind of
let's say it's like a branded kind of it's a
very specific kind of slime, like with gack. There we go,
So we make ghack. We make ghack. And what we
(20:30):
are the four largest manufacturers of ghack? And were your
company is called Ghakuta. Uh, it's not called Matt Ghack.
Well anyway, I we got we got lots of room
to play with this. So we are the four largest
manufacturers of ghack. And we say, hey, why are we
(20:52):
Why are we fighting with each other? You know what
I mean? Why? Why why are we all like living
living like dogs and popers? For a measly of a
small piece of pie, we could get together. We could
make the pie bigger and we could all profit off
of it. And what we would do then is well
be a group of suppliers or manufacturers and we would
(21:15):
conspire with each other. Literally would say, Okay, the price
of ghack no matter what, is always going to be
um arrested development reference is always going to be like
what what could it cost ten dollars? You know that's
what That's what we'll do. We'll do it the way
they did bananas. And then we would say, in addition
(21:37):
to that, the four of us are also going to cooperate,
whether through transparent legal means or through unethical illegal means,
to keep all those other dirty competitors out of the game.
You know, there's there's a there are a bunch of
independent producers of ghack, and we are going to destroy them.
(21:59):
So free market a cartel is not Yodo would say,
you know, a really great example of this isn't a
show that I've I've been rewatching recently, The wire Um
where there is a group of rival drug dealers who
are constantly at each other's throats and whoring and dropping
bodies in the streets, and then um, they they eventually
(22:20):
get together, pull their resources, use their influence to get
the best product and then share real estate. Um. And
then they also use that to vanquish any other competition
or if there is competition that's worth bringing into this
collusion or cartel type situation, they do that and just
absorb them. But it ultimately is about limiting competition and
(22:42):
about kind of the rising tide carrying all vessels, but
also not having any outsiders. Yeah, and in price fixing.
And I think just one minor thing we're missing with
the gack version that we're talking about here is that
with most cartels there's either natural resource or a resource
that is limited, there's limited access to Right. Our gag
(23:06):
is all organic exactly from the GA you're making. But yeah,
in the in the gag example, you would just it
would be more about the things needed to create the gag. Right.
So in this in Maples, the reason why it's important
or like almost like I would say, almost needed to
(23:27):
have a cartel like this, And I know that's a
little controversial, we'll get into it, but it's because there
is a limited amount of the stuff in circulation at
any given time, um, and controlling that the supply becomes
vital to the industry, Right, right, it becomes monopolistic, you know,
(23:48):
and the world of done about. Frank Herbert has an
excellent example of this with the spice. This is not
based on some sort of made up thing. The cartel
in question is called the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers.
But you know, the real name is in French because
it's kepaqua, it's usually referred to by the acronym f
(24:11):
p a q uh. The story of the organization is
interesting and dates all the way back to the nineteen fifties.
These guys have been active for a while. So over
in southern Quebec a group of remember the name sugar makers.
We're having a hard time because this is this is
hard work, just like farming. Uh. These folks are often
(24:33):
at the whims of the weather. They don't know what
may or may not affect the trees, and and sometimes
it's like active god level disasters. So they said, look,
we can no longer be at the whims of a market.
We have to be able to guarantee our survival, the
survival of our kids and our businesses. So we're gonna
get together and we're gonna vultron up will collectively market
(24:57):
our mapel syrup. This starts the nineteen fIF the eight
the idea catches on. It leads to the formation of
a larger group ultimately across the entirety of Quebec. And
since all they're they're typically called producers. All the sugar
makers in this fp a Q have worked together as
(25:21):
a cartel. They've set prices and they've also done something else,
they've set production quotas. That's the big problem that the
US historically had with OPEC. They would get mad at
OPEQ and UM. I had an old professor years ago
who said, that's a very nice person, but they said, uh,
(25:41):
opaque exists to stop the flow of oil and make
it expensive. And that was a little hot take because
it didn't seem like a good idea as a business model.
But it turns out it's a great idea as a
business model in some cases, especially if you want to
enrich um a all number of families that own all
(26:02):
the oil in the Middle East anyway, Yeah, or or
or dack tycoons like us. Hey, so so this is
this is again it's it's similar to OPEC. It's similar
to two Beers, which is the infamous diamond cartel, or
it's similar to the Phoebus cartel, which is the group
(26:23):
that back in the day purposefully made lightbulbs crappier. Yeah,
and also just hey, don't sleep on the diamond, the
Beers diamond thing that we I think we just put
out the classic episode on diamonds. Don't sleep on that.
Check Lauren and question, I didn't know the answer, but
(26:44):
just hypothetically speaking, a cartel isn't inherently illegal. I mean,
there certainly are illegal cartels the traffic and illegal goods.
But to me, the whole purpose of a cartel is
to limit competition and essentially create a monopoly. So is
it just kind of like a loophole that allows for
a legal monopoly of some sort? And why aren't these
challenged more often by you know, regulators? One A great question. Yes,
(27:08):
the answer, as we'll find, verges on the philosophical points,
but without sounding two cynical, what I would say, and
I welcome disagreements with this, what I would say is
that the issue of legality ultimately becomes just an issue
of who controls the mechanisms of the state. That's why
(27:28):
different countries have different laws. So like, if you so
so like, somebody may consider the activities of a cartel
domestically or internationally illegal, but if that cartel is powerful enough,
if they have enough access enough what you would call
juice in the wire or suction in the wire, suction
(27:51):
industry makes a lot of money, right, or if their
industry has already been purchased through perhaps unethical means by
the rulers of a country, then they get to decide
what they think is legal or illegal. So that's why
we have these legal cartels. And then you know, there's
(28:12):
a greater good argument that comes out, and sometimes it's
a good faith argument, but the the idea here is
the idea of what these guys are doing. This group
is legal. The government of Canada has sanctioned this, but
not everybody agrees because there's very much of who watches
(28:33):
the watchman kind of situation anytime you talk about a cartel,
because you could ask people throughout mining operations run by
de beers what they think of the cartel's activities, and um, yes,
sometimes being ethical and being legal are not always the
(28:57):
same thing, you know. Unfortunately. Yeah, And again, like we
were making these comparisons because it is the best, These
are the best ways to actually make these connections and
talk about these things. But you know, the mining operations
and some of the horrors, they are very different from
you know, sugar makers tapping trees. Right, But and and
there's also I mean they're there. That's the thing. We
(29:19):
we love the complexity of a topic like this because
it's it's not apples to apples or maples to maples
in every one of these um and I I'm only
saying this to point out that a lot of sugar makers,
and from what I've seen in the stats and some
(29:39):
of the stuff that was shown in that Dirty Money episode,
the producers and the sugar makers, the vast majority of
them are down with this cartel because it helps them, individually, uh,
make sure that they're able to sell their product at
a good enough price, to to get loans right, and
(30:02):
to be able to make enough enough profit off of
something that could be not profitable. Yeah, it's not like
these it's not like these folks who are in this,
in this industry, whether they are opposed to the cartel
or whether they support it, it's not like they're billionaires,
you know what I mean. They're they're like anybody else
(30:22):
with a job, trying to get by and in, you know,
in the opaque example. It's interesting is if you were
a member of OPEC, you would see clear advantages, especially
when you were cognizant of the way that colonial powers
absolutely exploited any place with oil for as long as
(30:46):
they could, you know what I mean. So it is
seen as um a protective, defensive move, which is why
it is called protection is m So this like like
to that point right now, this organization is legal. It's
a fantastic question. We'll get into the philosophy of the
(31:06):
of the problem later. But from the perspective of the folks,
the many members and supporters of what is sometimes just
called the Federation for shorthand uh, this group is taking
necessary actions to ensure that all important price stability, because otherwise,
if you're just out there independently, what if what if
(31:30):
the weather doesn't work out? What if something terrible happens
to the trees in your sugar brush, which is what
the collection and copes of trees being tapped is called
see because they're all like words with sugar in them,
so we can't just list them all. I don't know,
well and ben and also what if what if you
(31:50):
produced too much. Right, What if you've got too much
stuff and you don't have a buyer for all of
this syrup you've produced, right, Yeah, syrup sir plus could
be as bad as a syrup shortage. This this leads
to that that quota system, because the Federation doesn't just
dictate the price at which syrup has to be sold
(32:13):
in Quebec. They also dictate how much you, as a
sugar maker can make each sugaring season. So like if
we did that with our Gack cartel, then we would
be telling, you know, like, let's say we all agreed
that we were gonna sell we were all only gonna
(32:35):
sell ten million tons of gag units. There we go,
that's a little better. Yeah, ten million units each of ghack.
And then let's say Mission control has a bumper year,
his gag trees are doing awesome, and he's like, I've
made twenty million units at ghack and then we say, well, sorry, bro,
(32:59):
that's over your quote to uh so you cannot sell it.
As a matter of fact, you have to give it
to us. That's what happens in the maple syrup situation.
If you have a great year, no matter who you are,
if you have a great year and you harvest more
than the allowed quota, you cannot sell that excess syrup
the way you would want to, because it might end
(33:20):
up driving down that price and creating a surplus. Instead,
you have to ship it to you not something called
the global strategic reserve of maple syrup. Yet again, the
oil comparison holds. You know what I mean, the US
has a global reserve of oil or strategic reserve. Yeah. Now,
forgive me if I'm incorrect here. My understanding is that
(33:43):
it's not them just handing it over like for free.
They would they would get payment for not it's not
donating but essentially giving their syrup to the preserve. Yes, yeah,
And the key issue there is the timing. So let's
look at the other case. So if there's a low
production year, the Federation taps get it uh that reserve
(34:08):
and they release a controlled amount of syrup into like
out into the world. And the circulation, yes, they circulate
the syrup. And some people love this setup because again,
like like Matt was saying earlier, this makes it much
much easier to predict how future years will play out,
which is huge, hugely important. But other people had a
(34:32):
problem with this other maple syrup producers. Uh not, just
like outside observers with some economic policy acts to grind.
There are people who saying, I've been making maple syrup
my whole life. This maple syrup operation has been our
family for generations. We want to take a cue from
(34:53):
Sleetwood Mac and go our own way. The Federation wasn't
really cool with this in two thousand. In the early
two thousandsol here it called two thousand or two thousand four.
But in the early two thousands they did this thing
where they created an exclusive selling agency, meaning that no
matter who you were, if you were in Quebec and
(35:16):
you're you're in the syrup game, you you can't sell
like directly to a supermarket, you know what I mean.
You can't make a deal with like a restaurant chain
to just carry your your syrup. You have to sell
it to the Federation at that agreed upon price and
then they will basically run the rest of the sales
(35:36):
from there. So if you didn't like this and you
wanted to sell things yourself, you ended up putting syrup
on an actual black market. Wow. So this is to
say that any syrup in the syrup pile at your
local you know, grocery store chain, whether it's the like
twelve nine bottle seemingly small batch family operation on a situation,
(36:01):
or whether it's your you know, whatever they like. I
don't even know what the most mainstream syrup d jur
is today. They're all going through this system. Otherwise, No,
seven seventy right now, if you if you're walking in
a grocery store where any store selling maple syrup almost
(36:23):
anywhere in the world, in excess of seventy of it
is coming not just from Canada but from this place,
which means unless you're in like uh syrup black market
or unless there's like a black market supermarket, some syrup
comes from the United States, obviously, I mean like that's
so that's that's the issue here. Well, And a lot
(36:45):
of syrup you will find for sale wherever you live
is going to be corn syrup that's got some color
in it and may have some maple flavoring and or
maple syrup involved, but it's mostly corn. But it can't
say pure no, no, I can't say here, and there
is a premium on organic maple syrup, but largely like
these this organization has the heft to swing around and
(37:12):
to get its way. This is where stuff started clamping down.
And for people who are big free market proponents, this
is where it becomes a little bit of a horror
story because all producers in the area, all sugar makers
in the area, are required to sell their product directly
to this organization, whether or not they want to. So
(37:36):
it's not it's not quite the same thing as like
a union. You can't opt in, right, there is there
is one exception, which is you can sell small amounts
of your syrup directly from your farm, which are called
I love this sugar checks que two B fifty twos. Uh.
(37:58):
You can, so you can all your own stuff two
people who like happened by right, And you can also
if you want, you can sell the supermarkets as long
as you give the federation they're cut, which is twelve
off the top. It's not as big of a cut
as say Google takes off YouTube, but still twelve cent
(38:21):
makes a big difference in people's lives. As a matter
of fact, you know, let's let's talk a little bit
more about the money in this relationship, because that's where
that's where the problems with cartel's usually come into play,
and that's usually where you see like the if not
conspiracy inruption, that's where you're going to see the conflict.
Es estimates right now, our best estimate is that the Federation,
(38:47):
the cartel takes the equivalent of eleven cents US off
of every pound of produced. So let's just do the
math here. One gallon of syrup contains eleven pounds, so
a dollar twenty one US per gallon of syrup. Basically, uh.
And interestingly, and I guess kind of rationally, that money
(39:10):
that the Federation takes off, according to them, goes to
the promotion of maple maple syrup as a thing. It
is like, right, we're promoting the industry itself by having
this this group over like deployed on top of it.
And also in research, how can we tap these trees better?
And how can we store this maple for longer? And
(39:34):
what scientifically proven advantages does maple syrup have over say
something something others, some other sweet substance that people might
buy in a store like honey. So this makes sense,
and if you are a sugar maker, you also pay
an administrative fee to this organization. But again, the people
(39:55):
who are running this organization, staffing at working for it.
There they're going to say, look, we're making ends meet,
but please stop calling us, stop calling us like tycoons
and stuff, because we're just we're trying to do what's
best for everybody. The thing is again for their involvement,
(40:15):
whether consensual or non consensual. These producers are paid in installments.
So like going back to our surplus, your example, you
send in, you've exceeded your quota. How dare you be
good at what you do? Right? How dare you be uh,
you know, extraordinary what you're doing? Then you will be
(40:38):
paid for the syrup that has to be shipped off
to the strategic reserve. But you're paid on kind of
a layaway plan. And this has led some unhappy syrup
makers to say that they've they've said they're waiting like
months or in some cases years for these payments to
come in. And if you are paying other bill or
(41:00):
costs associated with keeping the lights on, etcetera, etcetera, then
you can't really go to your utility company and say
I'm waiting on the syrup money. I'll get to you
next year. Fingers crossed knock on maplewood so yeah, and
you can totally see why the black market feels like
(41:20):
it may be a viable option for that individual, like
you said, who needs to make payments to other people
while they're waiting on the other one. But there certainly
are you know, critics of this system from the on
the producer side, And one particularly vocal producer who was
fighting against f pack f p a q UM is
(41:41):
Angel grenier Um, who was kind of tired of the
whole set up. She was sick of the cartel pushing
her around and decided to take on a direct sales
model where she sold her syrup right to a distributor
bypassing the f p Q entirely. And the he's got involved.
(42:01):
All of her stock that she had warehouse was seized
and she was slapped with a crippling five hundred thousand
dollar fine. Um very much seems like they were trying
to make an example of her. So this is where
we start to really see problems brewing. And Ben I
believe this is one of the primary interviewees on that
(42:22):
Dirty Money episode. Yeah, this this person who's very outspoken
and kind of leading a fight against the cartel. It's
it's a fascinating story. Recommend you check out that episode
if you can, just to to get the background on it.
But we're gonna we're gonna continue on here because that
was just the beginning of the issues at hand. Here, Yes,
(42:45):
trouble was on the horizon. Well, pause for word from
our sponsor. We'll return with more, unless, of course, Big
Maple gets us. We've returned yet. So Grenier is often
(43:07):
quoted she's you'll you'll find her mention and her story
mentioned multiple local, regional, and international articles about this situation.
She has been her case when all the way to
the Canadian Supreme Court. By the way, just give you
a sense of how how important this was, and all
(43:30):
of this, this uh, this boiling, massive cultural sap. This
is the context in which the maple syrup heist occurs,
and from a cinematic perspective, it's pretty impressive. So the
reserve calling a singular thing might be a little misleading
(43:52):
to people because it's located in a series of three
warehouses in rural Quebec, and over the course of twenty
eleven and this group of conspirators stole thousands and thousands
of tons of maple syrup and it was a slow
motion operation. You know, they Federation themselves only found out
(44:15):
about this when they had that. It's another moment from
the heist review, like the High Story, which is just
a neat montage of tropes. Basically, uh, the there's always
the moment in the heist where there's the big reveal.
You know, someone opens the safe and it's gone. It
turns out that the cops were also working with the robbers.
(44:35):
And then you know the main like the bad guy
whomever in this case, Um, the Federation doesn't see themselves
to the bad guy, but you know, like the heist
crew probably saw them as the bad guy. There's this
moment if you could picture Oceans levin Quebec, where someone
from the Federation opens one of these syrup barrels and says,
(44:55):
holy oh no, that's that's water, that's not syrup. How
much did they get us for? And they found out
that this was easily like a quarter of the Syrup
Strategic Reserve, which means it's easily quarter of the world
saved up supply. And yeah, the police were involved, this
(45:17):
was a huge crime. In just a few days in
December of Canadian police ended up arresting like seventeen different
people who had some connection with the plot, and that
was on the orders of this cartel which continues today.
And again we can't emphasize this enough. We're not we're
(45:40):
not calling them villains. It does have ardent supporters and
it does have die hard opponents, and we have to remember,
as silly as a headline might sound, these are real people.
This maple syrup stuff is not their hobby. They get
up every day and think about it because it's their livelihood.
And Grenier is a famous example, but there are other
(46:01):
sugar makers who have been slapped with fines, huge fines.
They've also had their syrup, the stuff they made, seized
by this organization for going outside of its its rules.
And that's why you'll hear people like Grene say the
federation says they own my trees they make. They treat
(46:22):
it like it's their property. Uh. Really interesting article by
a reporter named Ross Merrowitz who said that the cartel
may accidentally, to a degree, be working against its own
interest because their rules may be strengthening competition from other
provinces in Canada and non Canadian competition in the US.
(46:46):
And I think Ross actually has a you know, a
pretty compelling case there, because if you can get look
if the reason why I bought this particular maple syrup
was because it was like five or six dollar is
less than the other ones, not the not the fully
like single barreled ones you were mentioning their and all,
but you know the maple syrups that existed where I
(47:09):
went to buy syrup, and it's still on maple syrup,
but it's significantly less expensive. And if you if you've
got competitors out there that are that are able to
have stuff on the market that is not at the
prices you're fixing that that are lower than those prices,
then you could be in very big trouble, especially if
you get them to big you know, distributors like um,
(47:32):
I don't know here in Atlanta, like a Kroger or
a Walmart or a Whole Foods or something like that. Yeah,
the Canadians apply in the cartel itself could be in trouble.
I gotta imagine too, Like I mean, there's this thing
called oh gosh, it's not the not AOC, what's that's
the lawmaker. But there's an organization in France that regulates
(47:53):
like what products can be given what names like for example,
true French champagne can only be called Champagne if it
comes from the Champagne region of France. UM does this
Cartel also UM govern kind of purity claims, like if
you're calling something pure maple syrup or even just pure
(48:14):
maple syrup, like in terms of how to use the
wire terms how much it can be stepped on, you know,
because I imagine that some maple syrup is diluted in
some way so that you can make your yield go further.
I don't have specifics on that. Uh. I would just
say that in something like this product that I have here,
(48:36):
the only ingredient is maple syrup. So I've seen others
that are like pure maple syrup and then extra stuff
or something like that. Um, but I don't know the
naming conventions and how they're applied. Yeah, because it may
be sold not directly to the end consumer, but it
might be sold to a company that then makes something
(48:59):
that's a lends somehow of the syrups. So it's it's
interesting because they're trying to they're trying It's phrased in
a very optimistic way by the Federation They're like, we
want to take place, we want to participate in this
expanding market. But it's, um, it's not inaccurate, because the
(49:21):
production in Quebec has increased, you know, year over year
for a decade. It increased from two thousand seven and
twenty sev. But it's also understandable how if you're making
maple syrup in Quebec you might feel these rules, however
well intentioned, hurt you more than they help you. Because
(49:43):
imagine you're seeing some you know, uh, some guy who's
like a weird equivalent of reverse carpet bagging out from Vermont,
crosses over the border and the same rules don't apply
to them. They can sell the Vermont Sarah all the
livelong day. And so these other, these Kabbaqua sugar makers,
(50:08):
the ones who are opposed to the federation, which again, um,
the research that we saw seems to indicate there in
the minority. But these folks feel that they may have
traded one disadvantage for another. You know, they're saying, look,
is hedging against unpredictable weather. Is it worth knowing that
(50:29):
I have to wait for months or years to get paid?
Is it worth knowing that I can't do what I
want with the trees that I or my family have
spent forty years minimum growing. Uh. Supporters of the end,
the staff of the Federation, people like Simon Trepanner, the
(50:50):
executive director, they disagree with being characterized in some shady behemith.
You know. Again, they're they're not. They wouldn't say they're
like Tycoon, certainly not oil country level wealthy. They claim
that their first and foremost concern is to represent people
who actually make maple syrup. But here we get to
(51:12):
the end because if you are outside of the industry
and you are thinking about this, it may represent a
much older conundrum, which is the philosophical conflict between a
controlled market and a free market. And this is a
very This conversation is cyclical. In the mainstream. It comes
(51:36):
up pretty often, you know, and sometimes it's phrased in
very very simplistic terms like someone's quoting Iron Rand at
you or whatever. But the real question here is what
what would be the benefit if there's a syrup free market,
(51:58):
if there's an unfettered sea free for all, which is
weird image out of context, would that would that be
better for these individuals or would it instead lead back
to like crazy fluctuations and results in you know, the
surplus as you describe mad or people having to find
like close down their family sugar shacks. What would happen?
(52:20):
Who knows? And there's uncertainty in there, right, And that's
kind of maybe the whole point. I really want to
look at who does this benefit the most by following
the money? So the federation itself we talked about, they
get eleven cents per pound of maple syrup produced, so
the federation gets that benefit. UM. They also get benefit
(52:40):
when they expand, so if they add more producers they
can they continue to make that eleven cents per pound. Right.
So in the Federation made a move they said they're
gonna add five million new taps. So that's like taps
not necessarily an individual tree, but individual taps in trees
to it's existing forty three million taps. And the goal
(53:03):
there is too really just more fully participate in that
larger market that we talked about UM, And what they
really want to see is an increased production overall by
thirty percent of so for you know, until or whatever
if they can, they want to do that, right, And
(53:25):
what I'm what my understanding is controlling these prices guaranteeing
that a sugar maker is going to make this money.
The biggest benefit is that the bank knows that if
you're producing maple, they will back you up with with
money for loans to either continue your business or expand
(53:45):
your business, because they are guaranteed to get paid back
at least some amount, because you are guaranteed to be
making money by this cartel. And and if if the banks,
if the banks in the cartel are like, yeah, we're
all good here, we can expand we'll give you money
to expand, the cartel's making money on the top of
(54:05):
the bank is lending out tons of money, that's making
tons of interest on all these loans. Everybody's like doing great,
and the sugar makers are making you know, whatever the
prices are that the cartel says they're going to be. Uh,
I don't know. I mean, it feels like the banks
are actually winning. And I mean the banks are usually
(54:27):
waiting and a lot of a lot of things unfortunately,
but but they're designed to write. So that's that's a
very great point about controlled market. You know, it does
does this collective action you could call it, to control
the quebecs spice. Does it ultimately make it easier for
(54:49):
people to succeed? Or is it really hurting more people
than it helps? Or who is it really helping? To
your to your question, that's that's something again that we're
not making a call on, but a lot of bowl are,
a lot of people are trying to answer that question,
and for others and for me as well. You know,
one thing that really stuck out was the concept of consent.
(55:13):
Consent informed consent is is a huge, hugely important thing
in every aspect of your life, professional and personal, and
it's a key factor. So would the federation, I would ask,
would they get less criticism if they didn't mandate or
force people to participate? So again, while these questions, the
(55:34):
tricky thing with these questions is that they all verge
into prognostication and philosophy. You can't really predict the future
unless you're unless dark is a little further ahead than
I think. And as a result, right now these questions
are not easy to answer. It does go to show that,
(55:54):
just like in the case of the Great Cheese Spiracy,
though even the most in knock with seeming things can
have a conspiracy behind them, and so with this, we
want to ask you folks, First off, waffles or pancakes.
When I'm not letting it go, I I gotta tell
you I respect your decision. If you're a pancake person,
(56:16):
more pancakes for you. But while you're thinking about that,
ask yourself. Should maple producers be required to join this federation?
Is it helping or hurting them? Overall? With this heist
still have occurred if the federation didn't exist. I mean,
let us know, and let us know if you'd like
to hear more stories about food conspiracies. Though, be warned, friends,
(56:37):
some of these stories are much much darker than this one.
Cough cough, palm oil cough cough, chocolate cough cough. Is
that a subtle enough hint? You guys don't even don't
even look into the gack industry that Oh god, it's bad.
Oh no, we can't. We've since it's hired. Hi, we've
(57:00):
been doing a podcast for fun, but we're really we're
ghackman at the end of the gackmananaman? How how can
how can people find us? How can they tell us
these things? They just shout out into the void into
the sky. Yeah, so Yeah, what is your what cartel
are you associated with? Tell us about it? Blow the
(57:21):
old whistle. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook
and YouTube where we are conspiracy stuff. On Instagram we
are conspiracy stuff show. Oh and I forgot to point
out the trees do not get paid. But if you're
if there's something, uh, if there's something you do want
(57:42):
to take away from this with the idea of tree rights.
Here in nearby Athens, Georgia, there is a tree that
owns itself. Wow, that's it. That's a that's you can
find that online too. You know what, the tree these
maples get paid in love because as we said, the
sugar those the sugar makers, they gotta take care of them.
(58:04):
Trees worth it? I don't know is love worth it?
I don't know, God, what's love got to do with it?
Love always friends away and you can find you can
find a way to contact us that doesn't depend on
the internet. Should you like to give us a call,
We have a phone number just for you and our
fellow conspiracy realist. It is one eight three three st
(58:27):
d w y t K. You'll hear a message. You'll
have three minutes. They belong to you. Let us know
what's on your mind, give yourself a sick nickname, bonus
arbitrary points for the nickname in fact, and most importantly,
let us know if we can use your voice and
or message on air. Equally, most importantly, don't feel like
(58:48):
you need to edit yourself. If your story needs more
than three minutes, If you have links you want to send,
if you have additional information, go ahead and write to
us directly. We read every single email we get. All
you have to do is shoot us a lied online
where we are. Look, I know, I know. This is
the part where we're going to tell you the email address.
(59:08):
We always do it every every episode. We're gonna tell
you the email address. But before that, we're recording this
on September two one and the Matrix Resurrections trailer just
came out, and I know you're excited. I'm excited. You
said you weren't going to watch it. Oh no, I'm
gonna watch every bit of it seven times in the theater.
(59:31):
I don't care if I've got to wear a full
Bubba Boy outfit. I'm watching the end of theater the trailer.
You're gonna watch the trailer that many times? The movie
the movie itself. It's happening. By the way, our email
addresses conspiracy and I hire radio dot com. Yeah, stuff
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