"Maple Syrup Takes a Turn Toward Technology"

"Today, five miles of pressurized blue tubing spider webs
down the hillside at Morse farm, pulling sap from thousands
of trees and spitting it into tubs. They help producers pull
twice as much sap as before."

        As my mom and I drove through Vermont this past week during spring break, we passed dozens of sugar shacks and maple syrup farms. Along the way we stopped for maple ice cream and similar treats containing Vermont's very own maple syrup. A couple days later, I came across a New York Times article about maple syrup! Is that good timing or what?! I didn't really know much about it going into the article; my only background was the sweet taste of the syrup. One thing that I did know was that while shopping for maple syrup at the grocery store two seemingly identical bottles sat next two each other. They both read "Organic Maple Syrup", but one was in a plastic bottle and the other was in a glass bottle. The plastic one was cheaper but was this the only factor that made it different? My mom and I turned the bottles over to compare the ingredients. Bingo! The glass 'All Organic' bottle had one ingredient, Pure Maple Syrup, while the plastic 'All Organic' bottle included a couple extra ingredients including 'organic corn syrup.' I have never heard of 'organic corn syrup' but corn in any form in maple syrup can't be too 'natural.' And unfortunately, this is exactly what we are headed for, more and more 'unnatural' maple syrup. 

          Climate change is disrupting temperatures in Vermont and causing great stress among syrup farmers. As a result, American maple syrup farmers have been forced to invest thousands of dollars in technology and machinery never needed before. With the high-tech equipment, farmers can now “process sap into syrup in 30 minutes, something that used to take two hours.” They are betting on technology and “installing equipment that may take 10 years to earn back their cost in syrup sales.” Although scientists say the technology is not harming the maples in anyway, it is the dependency that concerns me. The technology behind producing maple syrup is just another example of how each generation after the other today has become more and more dependent on technology. Similar to what I brought up in my Gas in the Natural Cycle, we are caught in a linear progression that is, I believe, 'unnatural' to nature's cycle because as we continue to increase our dependence on technology it causes climate change among other things, and in turn causes an even bigger increase in technology. So the big question now is: how do we move back to a more cyclical progression? And is it even possible?