A holiday tradition has emerged in recent years. As the last Halloween decorations come down and you start thinking about Christmas, you encounter a story warning of a Christmas-tree shortage.
Such stories have been widespread since at least 2017.
"Christmas tree shortage could cost you plenty of green," declared one such story, on NBC's Today Show, in 2019. It drives many in the industry nuts. They worry it might create bad will, stress out shoppers and even push some to buy artificial trees instead.
"Shortage to me means, 'We don't have enough, we're going to come up short.' We never have," said Marsha Gray, the executive director of the Real Christmas Tree Board, the U.S. Agriculture Department's research and promotion board for the industry.
Earlier this year, the board had grown frustrated enough with the drumbeat of shortage coverage, she said, that it issued a warning about "people who cry wolf about the supply of real Christmas trees each season … we've never run out of trees."
People rarely need to shop around much, she said.
Last year, 87% of consumers found the tree they wanted at the first place they looked, according to a survey conducted for the board.
Christmas-tree data isn't as detailed as for many crops. There are no official annual estimates of sales, Ms. Gray said. Private estimates vary widely but typically come in around 20 million trees. The numbers that exist don't confirm the stories of widespread shortage.
Growers did cut back in the aftermath of the 2007-09 recession because of several years of weak sales and oversupply. By 2017 the number of Christmas-tree farms was down 3% from 2012 and their total acreage was 4% lower, according to the U.S. Agricultural Census, which occurs every five years.
But there is little evidence this translated into trees being unavailable.
An annual survey from the National Christmas Tree Association, an industry group of growers, found the median price was $74.70 in 2016. In 2017, when stories about the shortage exploded, the price actually fell slightly to $74.30. The median price was $69.50 in 2021.
One reason for the mythology might be a disconnect between the Christmas-tree industry that people imagine -- relatively small choose-and-cut farms (the sort that feature in Hallmark movies) -- and the massive wholesalers that actually provide most real trees.
In 2021, only about 27% of trees came from choose-and-cut farms, according to the NCTA's survey. In 2017 the U.S. Agricultural Census found the smallest 10,000 farms combined had about 34,000 acres and sold 800,000 trees. The largest 400 farms managed 134,000 acres and sold nearly 10 million trees.
Odds are that some of the smaller farms will indeed run out, but that says nothing about the national supply.
"When you talk about undersupply, are you talking about during Covid when you went to buy toilet paper and it was bare shelves? No, that's not what we've ever seen or encountered," said Jill Sidebottom, a spokeswoman for the NCTA. "Are you talking about some retail lots selling out early? Sure."
There is also a distinction between real and artificial trees.
The NCTA's website is realchristmastrees.org, to help distinguish the group from the American Christmas Tree Association, which also represents artificial trees.
There is some tension between the two. A character in this year's Christmas comedy Spirited attempts to turn real vs. artificial trees into a new front in the culture war.
Mac Harman, the founder and chief executive of the artificial-tree maker Balsam Hill, which created the ACTA, bemoans the tension: "I think we're better off inspiring people to decorate for Christmas and then everybody wins, rather than fighting over should you get an artificial or real tree."
Though artificial trees, which are almost entirely imported, faced their own supply-chain problems in recent years, they might help moderate swings in real-tree supply. Some consumers might simply buy, or retrieve from their attic, an artificial tree if they hear stories of shortages.
Another source that keeps trees from running out is Canada.
Data on imported Canadian trees is quite good, because they have to be registered with Customs and Border Protection. Such imports nearly tripled from $23.7 million in 2012 to $67.9 million last year, or around three million trees, which likely mitigated declines in U.S. acreage.
Industry experts also say the Census of Agriculture undercounts tree production. Most agricultural commodities are regulated as food and have centralized points such as grain elevators that create lots of points to collect data. (Though Christmas trees aren't regulated like food, an intriguing cookbook came out a few years ago titled How To Eat Your Christmas Tree.)
The experts speculate that some growers underreport production levels to avoid paying the Agriculture Department's 15-cent-a-tree fee that funds the Real Christmas Tree Board.
"In North Carolina, we argue the numbers. A lot of growers underreport," said Jeff Owen, an area extension forestry specialist at North Carolina State University, who works with growers in eastern North Carolina.
"Even with fairly conservative assumptions," he said, "I think the numbers involve one to two million more trees per year harvested than what's typically been reported" in North Carolina, the second-largest tree-producing state, after Oregon. In 2017, North Carolina was officially estimated to produce four million trees a year.
For consumers, the veracity of the numbers doesn't really matter. What does matter is, "ultimately, there will be trees available of one kind or another," Mr. Owen said.
