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.