In the spirit of Worldchanging’s food series this week, here's an article about the trouble maple sugar farmers are facing, as reported in Saturday's edition of The New York Times.

Warmer winters are causing sap to rise sooner, making it very tricky to time when to tap the maple trees. (Click here for a primer on making maple syrup.) One farmer told the Times, "We can't rely on tradition like we used to." Instead of tapping his trees around Town Meeting day (the first Tuesday in March), he must tap earlier in February, and even then he's missing the first, and best, sap of the season.

While the U.S. (especially New England and upstate New York) used to produce 80 percent of the world's maple syrup and Canada 20 percent, today those numbers are reversed, largely because the climate conducive to good sugaring is migrating north. You don't have to be a climatologist to understand what's going on here.

Farmers will have to find ways of adapting to climate changes in order to maintain their sugaring operations. This will be a challenge since, as the Times also reported on Saturday, “the Bush administration’s climate policy will result in emissions growing 11 percent in 2012 from 2002,� which suggests more warm winters to come.

In the meantime, let’s enjoy as much New England maple syrup as we can until we find our way out of this sticky mess.