The Christmas tree industry just can’t catch a break.
The industry — a collection of tree farmers and sellers across the country — has only just emerged from supply shortages dating to the 2008 financial crisis. But right as they’ve started to find firmer footing, Christmas tree farms are staring down a new set of dangers, including climate change-fueled weather disasters and a shifting labor market.
Christmas trees don’t come from forests. Instead they are grown and harvested in farms. There are close to 15,000 farms growing Christmas trees across the 50 states, with approximately 350 million trees growing on them, according to the National Christmas Tree Association. U.S. tree farms cut about 15 million Christmas trees in 2022, the latest year data was available.
Three states — Michigan, North Carolina and Oregon — have the most acres of Christmas tree farms. Christmas tree farms across the country cover 266,964 acres of land, according to the most-recent USDA data. That’s close to 417 square miles, or a little less than half the land area of Rhode Island.
Challenges to Christmas tree farms span from coast to coast. Drought has wilted crops in Oregon, while wind, flood and landslides caused by September’s Hurricane Helene dented North Carolina’s tree production.
“It was definitely difficult,” Joe Freeman, owner of the Mistletoe Meadows tree farm in North Carolina’s Laurel Springs, said about the hurricane. “It was a lot of extra work there the first couple of weeks going into our season. But we saw a lot of support in the community.”
In North Carolina’s Ashe County — one of the top tree-producing areas in the country — most of the damage was to buildings and farm supplies. The actual Christmas trees, which are often kept indoors as seedlings and grow on high-altitude hillsides as adults, were relatively safe from flooding. The real danger to the trees during the hurricane were the landslides, farmers said.
“Fortunately our product was not destroyed,” Freeman said. While Mistletoe Meadows did incur some infrastructural losses from the hurricane, Freeman estimates upward of 95% of his trees survived the storm.
While no exact count is available, area farmers and scientists speculate that thousands of Christmas trees were lost in the hurricane, out of the millions growing in the region.
There are longer-term risks from Helene, said Justin Whitehill, who directs the Christmas Tree Genetics Program at North Carolina State University. The hurricane’s waters could worsen the spread of the water-borne root disease that was responsible for the Irish potato famine, which goes by the name phytophthora. Fraser firs, the most popular breed of Christmas tree in Ashe County, are particularly vulnerable to the disease.
“If we could not grow Fraser fir Christmas trees in North Carolina, we would not have a Christmas tree industry in North Carolina,” said Carrie McClain, president of the Ashe County Christmas Tree Association and a co-owner of Hart-T-Tree Farms.
Whitehill said he believes that while Christmas trees may be able to survive the direct impacts of climate change, like rising temperatures, the stress put on the trees will make them more vulnerable to existing problems such as phytophthora.
“The trees are experiencing warmer temperatures, or they’re not getting as much water — that puts a little bit of stress on the tree,” said Whitehill. “When we get stressed out it makes us more susceptible to getting sick. The same can be said with Christmas trees.”
Rising temperatures and droughts have worsened wildfires in some of the top growing counties in the U.S, particularly the Pacific Northwest.
“Especially the last four or five years, we were getting these forest fires every year, and that was largely due to climate change,” Whitehill said, citing the droughts that affected the region. “And then you have hundreds of thousands of basically matches on the landscape. A lightning strike anywhere would cause a fire to occur.”
In 2021, a heat dome formed over the Pacific Northwest, including the two top Christmas tree-producing counties in Oregon, causing record-high temperatures. While there were still plenty of trees to sell in 2021, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported that adult trees in Oregon suffered sunburns and many seedlings died in the heat.
“That did kill Christmas trees, and that had never really been seen before,” said Jill Sidebottom, the seasonal spokesperson for the National Christmas Tree Association, which represents over 700 Christmas tree farms and is responsible for selecting the White House’s Blue Room Christmas Tree each year.
Communities in Ashe County and elsewhere in western North Carolina are still putting themselves back together in the aftermath of Helene.
“This whole event has brought out what I would say is the best in people,” said Amber Scott, part owner of Cline Church Nursery in Fleetwood, N.C., which provided the 2023 White House Christmas tree. “It’s been quite incredible, the outreach we’ve had from all over the country and even outside of the country, of people wanting to give and donate. It’s been quite a humbling experience.”
While farmers may be nervous about worsening climate conditions, they are well versed in dealing with unpredictable weather.
“Everybody wants to know, is it climate change? Are things getting worse?” Sidebottom said. “I don’t get paid enough to know that, but you know, farmers have always had to deal with weather and uncertainty because of the weather.”
“Things are changing,” Whitehill said. “We need to be prepared for what the future brings. And pretty much every grower I work with, when I phrase it that way, they are on board 100% with that approach.”
Christmas tree growers in the United States also face challenges with the availability of labor and the rising costs of land.
“Most Christmas tree production, especially harvest, is labor intensive and you have to work no matter what the weather is like,” Sidebottom said. “And most people don’t like to work that hard or may physically not be capable of working that hard.”
Like the rest of the agricultural industry, Christmas tree farms rely on the labor of immigrants to harvest and transport the product. McClain, the president of Ashe County Christmas Tree Association, said all of the workers at her farm, Hart-T-Tree Farms, come in from Mexico through temporary agricultural work visas.
“We have the same guys come back year after year,” McClain said. “If we did not have access to that program, we would not find a U.S.-based workforce to harvest our trees.”
Data shows an increased reliance on that labor in the state. The number of migrant workers approved to work in North Carolina’s agriculture, forestry and fishing industries has increased nearly 50% from 2018 to 2024, according to an NBC News analysis of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.
Most farm crops are harvested the same year they’re planted. Not Christmas trees. The uniquely long time it takes to grow — a median of 7 years, but as many as 15 — makes any significant changes to the industry slow to start. Today, the industry is still recovering from the fallout of the 2008 recession, when decreased demand led growers to plant fewer trees, constraining the supply for years to come.
“The industry isn’t like a race car,” said Sidebottom. “It’s more like a train. It takes a long time to get things chugging, and it takes a long time to put the brakes on it, too.”
Despite the harrowing year, this holiday season is still a source of light for Christmas tree farmers in Ashe County.
“When folks have their slideshows, of their family members, you’ll see those Christmas photos,” Freeman, the owner of Mistletoe Meadows. “And what’s always in that Christmas photo is that Christmas tree. It just to me, it reiterated the fact that the Christmas tree is sort of the centerpiece of the home for your family during Christmas.”
“Farming always has its challenges, and farmers are very resilient,” Freeman said. “And I think our harvest and selling season has gone well this year. It’s been a good, good season for Christmas trees.”
