SUTTON, Quebec -- Roger de Winter is new to the maple industry. This is his fourth season, with 6,000 taps in his 75-acre sugarbush.

His equipment is state-of-the-art, with vacuum pressure on his maple sap tubing and fancy equipment in the sugarhouse. Most of his syrup will be exported.

It's sugarmakers like de Winter who have helped propel Quebec to its pre-eminence in the maple syrup world. In 1998, the latest year for which comparative figures are available, the province made 74 percent of all maple syrup in the world; Vermont was the top U.S. producer that year but made roughly 5.6 percent of the world's production.

In 1998, Canadian exports of maple syrup were worth about $112 million in Canadian currency. In contrast, the U.S. Department of Agriculture puts the value of Vermont's maple syrup crop that year at $10.4 million.

Quebec has long been the world's top producer but in 1993, the province made 66 percent of the world's syrup and Vermont made roughly 7 percent.

Now, along with technology and marketing pressures, comes a third factor that might be contributing to Quebec's growth as a maple giant: global warming.

There is anecdotal evidence that yes, ... (the maple) industry is moving from Vermont into Canada,'' said Steven McNulty, program manager for the U.S. Forest Service's southern global change research program, from his office in Raleigh, N.C. ''And the ... (computer programs) we use suggest that trend will continue.''

McNulty is co-chairman of a committee that is preparing a national assessment of what global warming will mean for the nation's forests. The study is due out in late spring; McNulty presented results, including predictions about the maple industry, from the assessment last month at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

Most scientists say human activity, particularly burning fossil fuels, has changed the composition of the atmosphere enough to help alter the Earth's climate. According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Earth has warmed about 1 degree in the past century and could warm another 2 to 6 degrees by 2100.

McNulty said virtually every one of the computer programs that scientists use to predict how a changing climate will affect the Earth show that sugar maples will essentially disappear from Vermont by the end of this century.

McNulty says he's not optimistic about the maple industry in Vermont.

"It's not a good industry to get into," he predicted.

Earlier tapping?

Global warming could help sugarmakers in central Quebec by providing the exact combination of cool nights and warm days that is needed to make syrup, scientists say. The weather could become less favorable in Vermont in a warmer world by reducing the length of spring and limiting the snowpack that moderates temperatures.

While the beginning of the maple sugaring season is notoriously variable, anecdotal evidence reinforces some of those predictions.

De Winter, for example, says for all of his new technology, he's learned much from the old-timers, including the fact that he needs to be ready for a sap run as early as mid-February.

"In the old days that was virtually unknown," de Winter, 48, said one warm day last week, as he worked to repair a broken sap pump. "It used to be you never tapped before the first week of March. Now you have to be ready February 15."

That's the feeling of David Marvin, a longtime sugarmaker in Johnson, Vt. "It is a fact that sugaring is coming earlier than it did 25 years ago," said Marvin, who's been making syrup for 28 years. "That is indisputable."

New technology

Gary Gaudette, president of Leader Evaporator Co. in St. Albans, Vt., said technology is expanding Quebeckers' abilities to tap trees in places once inaccessible.

"It used to be you went into the woods with teams of horses and a wagon, and emptied buckets," he said. "You needed the correct weather, and you needed to be able to process the sap quickly enough" to make good syrup.

Especially in areas near Quebec City and eastward, where the snow was deep, the old-fashioned techniques made it difficult to make a good crop.

Technology -- the introduction of tubing that brings the sap right to the sugarhouse, and machines that can help remove some of the water from the sap before it's boiled -- has made it far easier to make syrup in big sugarbushes where the snow is deep, Gaudette said.

Nonetheless, it was his observation that warmer temperatures were also contributing to Quebec's skyrocketing growth in maple syrup production.

"There are areas in Quebec where they are making syrup, where, 25 or 30 years ago, they just weren't able to get into the woods," Gaudette said.

That was also the observation of de Winter.

"It used to be the snow was so deep, and the spring was so short, you couldn't tap" in central Quebec, de Winter said. "Two weeks ago, it was so warm here it was incredible. ... It's very worrisome."

Charles Ross is secretary of the Quebec Maple Syrup Federation, which represents roughly 10,000 maple producers in the province.

He says the growth in Quebec's production is a deliberate effort on the part of the government and Quebec producers. Global warming "is more a preoccupation for the future," Ross said. "It is not a factor that explains the increase of maple syrup production in Quebec."

Ross said the dominance of Quebec in world maple syrup production is due in large part to new technology that's widely available. Additionally, Quebec producers have joined with processors to increase international markets, said Paul Chessman, a spokesman for MapleMark, a Quebec-based international certification program that assures consumers the syrup they're buying is 100 percent maple.

"It's a (Canadian) federal initiative to double exports in the next three years," Chessman said. Ross also said he believed landowners in northern New England were more willing to cut maple trees for lumber as opposed to investing in the forests for maple production.

"In Quebec, more of the sugarbush owners, they are like (maple) farmers, and they prefer to invest in their business, said. "A lot of the equipment dealers, they push the producers to invest."

Peter Schweizer, 43, taps about 900 trees in his Sutton sugarbush. He's been sugaring for 20 years, selling the syrup at his family's inn and to a nearby bakery.

He doesn't think global warming has had a particular effect on his business. This year, the sap run came so early -- about a week and a half earlier than he expected -- that he missed the first run.

"It was early this year, but other years, it's basically normal," Schweizer said.

Eternal optimist

Marvin, who is tapping about 4,000 trees this year, said while he knows global warming will pose problems, he thinks it will be far more severe for maple syrup producers in southern New England.

He said he's much more worried about what global climate change will mean to people in Bangladesh, for example, where rising sea levels will inundate lands where people live.

"I am not really worried about northern Vermont; we are in the middle of the maple region," Marvin said. "I am an eternal optimist, otherwise I wouldn't be a sugarmaker."