Oh, Christmas tree, not you, too: Issues with supply chain come to the fir trade
Not even Christmas trees could escape the economic pandemonium of 2021.
Rerouted Fraser firs, fried Oregon pines, artificial trees caught in broken supply chains, and sky-high transportation costs have contorted the seasonal arbor trade like an oversize tree scrunched under a low ceiling. The situation has importers, growers, sellers and — now, finally — buyers even more frazzled heading into Black Friday, when Christmas tree shopping begins in earnest.
Now many families are unsure whether they will spend the holiday gathered around a majestic tower of greenery — or something more reminiscent of Charlie Brown’s sad spectacle.
“Christmas is not canceled. Everyone will be able to find a Christmas tree,” said Jami Warner, executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association, a trade group representing the artificial tree industry.
The group has said this year’s supply of real Christmas
trees will be squeezed by the summer’s heat dome in the Pacific Northwest, while supplies of artificial trees, largely coming from China, will be affected by the same shipping and labor problems plaguing many industries.
Warner predicts price hikes of 10 to 30 percent over last year, “a lot of that on the artificial side.” She urges consumers to shop early because otherwise, “your tree may not be the tree you were looking for.”
Doug Hundley, seasonal spokesman for the National Christmas Tree Association, a separate trade group that represents live tree growers, is more sanguine about this season’s supply. He said prices for live trees will be more like 5 to 10 percent higher than last year, following the trend of the past several years.
The Pacific Northwest is the largest producer of live trees, with about 5 million trees cut annually, Hundley said, accounting for nearly 25 percent of the national supply. He said the region’s stock is down 10 percent due to this summer’s heat and drought, so the reduction of available trees could be half a million. That’s a tiny fraction of the total number of Christmas trees growing on tree farms spread across the United States, he said.
Baby trees suffered the most damage due to summer drought and high heat.
“When the temperature was 117 degrees on our farm, it did a lot of damage to the seedlings. They don’t have the root mass to support that moisture loss,” said Bob Schaefer, who grows half a million trees a year at Noble Mountain Tree Farm in Salem, Ore. He said he’ll have to do a lot of replanting to replace the seedlings that died, but that the long-term impact for consumers is negligible.
There has always been tension between artificialtree producers and live-tree growers. The latter has lost ground to the former and now nearly 80 percent of household trees are artificial. Hundley said that often the American Christmas Tree Association has spoken on behalf of the whole industry, but it sometimes doesn’t accurately reflect the realities of the live-tree industry.
Take transportation costs, for instance, he said.
“All this transportation talk largely came out of concerns for the artificial tree supply, which comes on ships from overseas. Real trees are not so much that way; a third are grown very near where they are purchased. And on chooseand-cut farms there’s no shipping, obviously. No one is shipping live trees from the West Coast to the East Coast or vice versa; we sell as close to home as possible,” he said.
The big unknown, according to Schaefer, who runs Noble Mountain Tree Farm, is what happens when consumers see the prices for artificial trees surge significantly more than those for live trees.
“I saw artificial trees at Home Depot for $600 to $1,000, and you can get a live tree for $70,” he said. “I think what’s going to happen is demand is going up 5 to 10 percent for live trees, and that’s going to create this shortage situation.”