Woodburn Independent Online

Tree growers optimistic about industry

Local Christmas tree farmers planted cautiously last year and are hopeful 2010 will be a good year

• By: Rachel Cavanaugh  
• Published: 10/27/2009 8:40:57 AM

Photo By: Photo courtesy Yule Tree FarmsFrom the field to your living room
Workers from Yule Tree Farms in Aurora pack freshly cut trees to the edge of the field for processing. Trees from Yule Farms get transported all over the U.S. and to Canada and Asia.

WOODBURN — Local Christmas tree growers expressed both of fear and optimism last week about the sales season ahead.
 
According to Joe Sharp, co-owner of Yule Tree Farms in Aurora, the “jury is still out” on how things will shape up. Sharp called himself “cautiously optimistic.”
 
“Christmas does come, it is a traditional thing,” said Sharp. “We’re anticipating similar levels of sales of trees as what we’ve had in the past. … There’s just concern everywhere. You can feel it in everybody’s voices.”
 
After a 2008 season that saw national sales decline 10 percent, it is perhaps no wonder some are worried. Oregon farmers have been spotted cutting trees down and burning swaths of land.
 
Sharp said part of the problem is the market for large trees is so narrow. Some growers turn to wood chips or other industries, but once a tree gets to a certain size, options are limited, he said.
 
Also, Christmas trees take seven to eight years to come to harvest. Part of why crops have been destroyed is that six or seven years ago the industry was great, Sharp said. Growers were planting twice as many trees.
 
“It’s the same reason people plant too many potatoes or too much corn,” he said. “They see a strong market. They get to thinking it’s never going to change, it’s going to go up, and they over plant. Just like why … we have too many houses. Everybody thought people would just keep buying houses, right? Same theory.”
 
He said consistently planting about the same volume is what saved his farm from big losses.
 
According to the National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA), about 25 to 30 million Christmas trees are sold annually in the U.S. There are about 350 million trees currently growing on farms nationwide.
 
Last year, overall drops in the number sold were seen throughout the nation.
 
“Some of the parts of the country sales were up and some sales were down,” said Rick Dungey, NCTA public relations manager. “It was all geographic.”
 
A lot of the California market was down. There were a lot of economic concerns there.
 
“We saw less expensive trees selling maybe a little bit more vigorously than they had in the past when people had more money. Last year they were maybe buying a smaller tree.”
 
According to NCTA, the average amount spent on a farm-grown tree last year was $36.50, which represented a 14 percent overall drop when paired with declines in artificial tree sales.
 
That said, the association reported 35 percent of people polled said they planned on buying a farm-grown tree this year, a fact Dungey called promising news.
 
Sharp agreed.
 
“People were just shocked last October, November, December,” said Sharp.
“This year, there are actually some people that hadn’t been in the business for awhile who have opened up lots. So there’s a slight, slight — I mean very slight — bit of optimism.”
 
Sharp has 4 million trees planted on his 3,000-acre farm, 12 percent of which is harvested annually. He said his workers will start cutting in about a week.
 
Oregon produces almost 8 million trees per year, Sharp said.
 
With a population of less than half that, wholesale growers must ship to other states, as well as foreign markets.
 
He ships to Canada, Mexico and some Asian ports, with destinations ranging from chain stores to hardware stores, nurseries, independent lots, Boy Scout troops, churches and other charity-based lots.
 
The oversupply of trees has put pressure on growers to come down in price, Sharp said.
 
Last year, he resisted the pressure and said he was able to sell trees without any major price cuts.
 
“There were some minor ones but nothing dramatic,” he said.
 
“I hear about a lot of other growers that are dropping prices four or five bucks a tree but I have not experienced that. … If that’s the case, then we’re probably not interested in selling to them. … You can’t do this for nothing.”
 
He said rumors about pricing can sometimes take off rapidly.
 
“Some of the people are just panicked,” he said. “They don’t know what they are going to do and they see these other trees getting burned and they don’t want to be one of those.”
 
All in all, however, he said he is staying positive.
 
“There’s just a lot of unfounded concern, I think, and fear by a lot of people about a lot of things and the Christmas tree industry is not immune to that.
 
“In the U.S., I think people are optimistic that the trees that sold last year, people will buy a tree again this year and hopefully they’re financially a little better off than they were last.”

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