Maple Syrup and Commercial Production

We had a big maple shading our yard, which once I tapped and made a little bit of maple syrup from the sap.  Only once, because I didn't and don't have the patience needed to boil down the sap.  But my memories of that long-ago episode meant  I found this post at Casaubon's Book on the plight of New York syrup makers interesting.  The unusually warm weather meant production is way down. And most interesting was the idea of a vacuum system, which commercial producers now use to extract sap.  $10,000 for such a system won't sound like much to commercial grain producers in the Midwest, but it's a step up for people who didn't use to need such capital.