States compete for

top tree growing status
By Scott Nicholson
nicholson@wataugademocrat.com

North Carolina now wears the country’s Christmas tree crown. Well, depending on whom you ask.

When state agriculture commissioner Steve Troxler watched the harvesting of a presidential tree in Ashe County last month, he announced that the state was now the nation’s leader in Christmas trees. The tree was selected and shipped on Nov. 20 from Mistletoe Meadows farm, and Troxler was on hand to commemorate the occasion and celebrate the state’s tree industry.

Troxler said North Carolina has exceeded Oregon as the leading Christmas tree state in the nation, and his remarks caused some annoyance in Oregon, whose tree industry questioned the statement. Troxler came back a week later and said his ranking was based on cash receipts, not production.

Troxler drew on the figures that are part of the National Agricultural Statistics Service data, which reports North Carolina’s cash receipts for 2006 at $134 million and Oregon’s at $121 million. However, the NASS data ranks Oregon number one in Christmas tree production.

“Growers in North Carolina and Oregon recognize that the real competition is not with each other, but the plastic trees imported from other parts of the world,” Troxler said, adding that real trees offer many benefits including oxygen production and pleasing aromas. “Try as you might, you just can’t capture the scent of a freshly cut Fraser fir in a spray bottle,” Troxler said.

North Carolina records 50 million Christmas trees produced by more than 1,500 growers, including more than 400 choose-and-cut farms.

North Carolina has provided the White House tree 10 times, which is the most of any state.

Local tree farmers are reporting strong sales despite a controversy in which some directional signs to farms were suspected of being removed or stolen. Christmas tree sales in Watauga County amount to about $8.5 million each year, making it the county’s most valuable agricultural crop.

According to the National Christmas Tree Association, Oregon sells about three times the number of trees that North Carolina does, at more than six million a year.

About one in four households will use a real Christmas tree this year. Linda Gragg, director of the Boone-based North Carolina Christmas Tree Association, said the state has long been the top seller in dollar amounts.

She said because of the large number of trees produced in Oregon, growers there might be more competitive in the wholesale market and tend to drop their prices.

Troxler later said the real competition was not between tree-growing states, but between the tree farmers and the artificial-tree industry. Gragg supported that statement, adding industry promotion efforts focused on the advantage of trees as a natural, renewable product.