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Christmas tree image via flickr user rfduck

published on November 20, 2019 - 12:04 PM
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If your plans for the holiday season include buying a Christmas tree, you might want to buy early.

And expect to pay more, warned Sidney Boolootian, who has operated Christmas tree lots in the Fresno area for decades.

“There’s a shortage of trees. Problem is in the 41 years I’ve been in [the business], this is the worst shortage I’ve ever seen,” he said.

The reason isn’t due to fires or deforestation or tree disease.

Part of the reason is that a newly-planted tree has to grow eight to 10 years — and be cared for by tree farmers — before it can be harvested and generate income, Boolootian explained.

These days, a lot of those farmers are opting to replace their Christmas trees with other crops — hazelnuts, for example — that can generate quicker and more frequent returns on their investments.

Another problem is indifference, as many Christmas tree farmers have been retiring, and their children frequently aren’t interested in getting into the labor-intensive business,” Boolootian said.

For the past 25 years, he said he has been heading to the Pacific Northwest to mark the trees he would buy, “so I’m very in tune with what’s going on in the industry on the growing end. The shortage is about a million-and-a-half trees short this year” available nationally for retail sales.

As a result, some people buying close to Christmas day may find selections low or some lots running out of trees.

In addition, the cost of trees is likely to be a bit higher this year compared to last year — probably in the $5 range, Boolootian said.

For his part, he said, that’s not likely to be a high enough price boost to affect fresh-cut tree sales, as people who want real trees tend to get them over artificial ones, as long as they’re priced within reason.

But not everyone in the Christmas tree industry shares Boolootian’s concerns about a shortage this year.

“This will be the third year in a row there will be a shortage of Christmas trees” that news agencies have reported, but the statistics just don’t support that, said Tim O’Conner, executive director of the National Christmas Tree Association, a Colorado-based trade group representing people in the Christmas tree industry.

Based on professionally conducted surveys done after each Christmas season, sales of real Christmas trees have increased each of the past three years, with the 32.8 million sold in the 2018 season increasing 20 percent over the previous season. O’Conner said that couldn’t have happened if there was an actual tree shortage.

As for this coming season, he said the availability of trees is expected to be tight, and some individual tree vendors or growers may have supply issues, but no national shortage is expected by his group.

“There’s never been a community in the country where you couldn’t buy a tree up to Christmas day.”

As for the prediction that tree prices may be up, O’Conner noted that last year the industry saw a modest 4% average increase.

Seeing as how the market for Christmas trees seems so healthy this year, O’Conner said, “It wouldn’t shock me if there were a modest price increase.”


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