Quebec’s maple syrup producers will get over $760,000 in federal funding to study their products’ health benefits and carry out a “long-term marketing strategy.”
“The Federation des producteurs acericoles du Quebec (FPAQ) works actively to improve the competitiveness of maple products on both domestic and international markets in order to support this industry’s long term growth,” Quebec MP Jean-Pierre Blackburn, the federal minister of state for agriculture, said in a release Thursday.
“Recent years have been difficult for maple syrup producers, and our government has not let those producers down,” he said.
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FPAQ said it plans to double the value of maple product sales by 2020, through a marketing strategy aimed at promoting value-added maple products to international consumers, and to highlight the “numerous uses of maple in food and other sectors because of its health benefits.”
The marketing strategy implementation will get $595,000 from the federal government’s four-year, $88 million AgriMarketing export development program, part of the Growing Forward framework.
The two health studies, meanwhile, will share $168,583 in funds from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s adaptation program, managed in Quebec by the Conseil pour le developpement de l’agriculture du Quebec (CDAQ)
The first study is meant to determine the “nutraprevention and nutrition therapy effects” of maple syrup; the second is meant to help verify the health effects of a maple drink.
