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- A combination of factors has made Christmas trees harder to find and more expensive this year.
- The coronavirus pandemic has led people to buy up trees at higher levels than in previous years, growers report, as people seek to create a festive, comforting atmosphere in their homes.
- The pandemic has also led growers who sell in places like New York City to change their plans due to the virus.
- But the tight supply also has roots in the Great Recession: Trees take eight to 12 years to grow, and in the height of the Recession in 2008, farmers had little incentive to plant trees at their typical levels.
- Prices have more than doubled since 2008: By 2019, the median price of a tree in the US was $76.87, according to data from the National Christmas Tree Association.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
If you’ve had trouble buying a Christmas tree this year, you’re not alone: There’s a tight supply in several parts of the US, and it has something to do with the Great Recession.
Christmas tree shoppers from North Carolina to North Dakota are seeing shorter supply and increased prices this year, while some sellers had to shut down weeks before Christmas due to a lack of inventory.
In Michigan, for example, Christmas tree farmers are seeing a 50% increase in sales, Amy Start, the executive director of the Michigan Christmas Tree Association, told The New York Times. Farmers from states like Vermont, who drive thousands of trees to New York City each year, told The Times that demand has roughly doubled.
The spike is due, in part, to people seeking a sense of comfort and a festive feeling during an otherwise bleak year.
“With COVID being on this year, I’ve had customers tell me they wanted something happy in the house,” Rhonda Heath, who works at Boyd Mountain Christmas Tree Farm near Asheville, North Carolina, told the Asheville Citizen Times.
"They want something pretty to look at, and some that usually do artificial, this year they wanted a live tree," she said. According to Boyd's website, the farm closed on November 29, citing the national tree shortage, though it's still selling trees at a retail lot.
In places like New York City, COVID is also a factor in the shortage, but for an entirely different reason: According to The Times, vendors are operating fewer stalls, as many of them made their selling plans in the spring, during the onset of the pandemic.
While the virus, as well as the desire to create a pleasant holiday atmosphere at home, are certainly factors in the tree shortage, the short supply also has roots in the Great Recession that wreaked havoc on the American economy.
The situation actually goes back further than 2008: According to a 2017 piece by The Atlantic's Elizabeth Limbach, there was a spate of "overzealous" tree planting about 20 years ago. In the late 1990s, land and labor were more affordable and some farmers hadn't yet switched to growing now popular crops, like wine grapes. It resulted in over-planting, which led to a massive crop of Christmas trees several years later, since Christmas trees typically take 8 to 12 years to grow.
That means that at the onset of the Recession, the nation was experiencing a glut of Christmas trees at a time when households had less money to spend on them.
The combination of an oversupply of trees and a recession that hurt farmers meant that tree-growers had little resources or incentive to plant new trees at their typical levels, The Atlantic reported. Across the US, total tree acreage decreased 30% from 2002 to 2012, according to The Wall Street Journal's Valerie Bauerlein.
Which means that now, 8-to-12 years later, there are fewer trees that have reached maturity, meaning there are fewer trees on lots nationwide.
The after-effects of the Recession-era tree planting have been visible for several years. Trees that were planted in 2008, for example, began reaching maturity in 2016, and media reports on the shortage from NPR, the Journal, and The Atlantic cropped up in 2017.
The tighter supply has also meant that Christmas trees simply cost more now. Between 2008 and 2019, the average price of a tree more than doubled - by 2019, the median price of a tree in the US was $76.87, according to data from the National Christmas Tree Association.
One Oregon-based grower told The Wall Street Journal last week that he estimates prices have gone up 30% in the last four years alone. Overseas, prices have skyrocketed to as much as $2,167 for an 8-foot tree, according to the Journal.
Still, tight supply and high prices don't necessarily mean that shoppers have been completely unable to find a tree this year, they may have just needed to adjust their expectations, Marsha Gray, executive director of the grower-funded research and promotion organization Christmas Tree Promotion Board, told The Times.
"Some locations might close early, some locations may not have trees to sell," she said. "But over all, there are enough trees and there aren't communities going without."