Shortage of artificial trees may convince consumers to pick out real Christmas trees this year

QUINCY — Looking for an artificial Christmas tree for the holidays? Good luck.

Worldwide supply-chain bottlenecks and shipping delays are wreaking inventory havoc for big box stores, resulting in a Christmas tree shortage.

“All the artificial trees are sitting in a harbor off the coast of California,” said Butch Augspurg, who along with his wife Darlene owns and operates the Branch Ranch, a Christmas tree farm in Philadelphia, Mo. “If you go to Wal-Mart or someplace like that now, instead of having four aisles of trees like they normally do, they have a half-dozen trees.”

Jami Warner, executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association, recently told the Washington Post that she predicts price hikes of 10 to 30 percent for artificial trees. She told the Post that consumers should shop early, because otherwise “your tree may not be the tree you were looking for.”

Average live tree to cost $78; average artificial tree to cost $104

The ACTA reports 94 million U.S. households celebrated Christmas in 2020 by displaying a Christmas tree in their home. Of those trees, 85 percent were artificial, and 15 percent were live. The average live tree will cost consumers $78 this year, while the average artificial tree will cost $104. However, an artificial tree typically will last between 10 to 20 years.

Augspurg, president of the Missouri Christmas Tree Growers Association, is prepared for a busy month ahead. Shoppers celebrated Black Friday on the day after Thanksgiving, while Green Friday is typically the first day for people looking for a real Christmas tree.

The difficulty of finding artificial trees is expected to send many families to places like the Branch Ranch. Augspurg had approximately 650 Scotch pines ready to be cut down at his farm. He also imported about 150 Fraser furs from a farm in southern Michigan. 

“If I wanted Fraser furs for this year, I had to order them in February. The wholesalers are scrambling to get enough trees,” Augspurg said.

Augspurg planted 5,000 trees on his farm in the spring of 1990. It takes roughly seven to eight years for a Christmas tree to grow to be at least five to six feet tall, so the first trees were sold in 1997. Augspurg has been planting 1,000 trees a year since. After weather, insects and other issues, about 650 to 700 trees typically survive to be sold.

Average cost of Scotch pine at Branch Ranch to be $45 to $50 this year

“I sell more trees than I can grow,” he said. “I’d like to have a lot of eight- and nine-foot stuff on the stump. The standard used to be nine- and 10-foot trees, but right now, I can’t even get an eight-foot tree on the stump. I’d be tickled to death if I could keep eight-foot trees. Now it’s more like sixes and sevens. People want them so fast before you let them grow.”

The number of trees sold in the future at the Branch Ranch will be declining. Augspurg is 77 years old, and his wife is 80. He doesn’t plan to plant any more trees to be sold seven years from now.

The average cost of a Scotch pine off the stump at the Branch Ranch will be $45 to $50. The cost of a Fraser fir starts at $65. 

“I would never recommend an artificial tree, because they give toxic fumes and gases when they burn,” Augspurg said. “They shed, too, worse than a Scotch pine or Fraser fir. 

“If you take one of my trees or from any tree association member, and they cut if off for you fresh, take that tree home and put it in water. A seven-foot tree will drink three quarts to a gallon of water for a week, and then they’ll taper off. If you do that, you can get four to six weeks of use out of it.”