maple syrup contains 2/3 sucrose. Mainly
Acer saccharum, nigrum and rubrum, present in North America, let produce 0.08Mt/year, or just 0.05Mt/year sucrose
wikipedia -
quebec.ca -
thecanadianencyclopedia.cafar from the 70Mt/year crop from Ukraine. But could the
production increase?1hm
2 sugar maple produces 250L syrup or 170kg sugar. The species extend over 1 000 000 km
2 in the wild. Imagine they make 1/20 of the area (do they?) of which 1/5 is reasonably accessible. Tapping the forests makes potentially
0.17Mt/year. If the bitter taste is removed, sap can be harvested over a longer period to produce
0.5-1Mt/year more sucrose. Nothing brilliant, but this feeds 20M people more.
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Or could the fat
Europeans and North Americans ingest less sugar and ship it instead to hungry people? Where I live, mustard, chilli, saffron and tomato sauces contain sugar, yuk, and even guacamole did recently. Germans swallow 32kg/year, 3.5× the maximum recommended by WHO, and get sick from it. Much comes from soft drinks that contain 2× as much sugar as in the UK.
de.statista.com -
test.deImagine that the consumption shrinks to 25kg/year just from receipe changes, that's 0.5Mt/year for Germany alone, let's say 1.5Mt/year for the EU, as much for North America, and sugar has more feeding value than the same mass of wheat. We can be healthier and
save 3Mt/year sugar to feed 80M people more.
Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy