How many fresh-cut Christmas trees are being harvested in Wisconsin?

Christmas tree farmers have hopes that a decades-long decline in the number of fresh-cut trees harvested every holiday season — driven by generational turnover and the market for artificial decorations — is on the verge of turning around.

By Steven Potter

December 11, 2024

A sign with illustrations of coniferous trees and the words This Is A Christmas Tree Farm, Feel Free To Breathe Deeply, The Trees On This Farm Are Absorbing Carbon Dioxide Laden Air And Sending Out Oxygenated Air and Use A Naturally Grown Tree Every Christmas So That This Farm Can Keep Making Clean Air stands in a field of small coniferous trees, with hilltops covered by leafless deciduous trees on the horizon under a cloudy sky.

A sign in a field at Hann's Christmas Tree Farm in the town of Oregon in south-central Wisconsin urges customers to "feel free to breathe deeply" on Dec. 10, 2024. Since the start of the 21st century, the number of fresh-cut Christmas trees and Christmas tree farms in Wisconsin has declined considerably. (Credit: Steven Potter / PBS Wisconsin)

With its aroma of fresh pine and hints of citrus, there’s nothing quite like the smell of a fresh-cut Christmas tree.

But for those who love that smell and enjoy having a tree in their home during the holidays, there are fewer and fewer live Christmas trees to choose from in Wisconsin and fewer tree farms to get them from.

Greg Hann, who’s owned and operated Hann’s Christmas Farm near the town of Oregon south of Madison for 25 years, said there has been a significant decline in both harvested trees and tree farms.

The problem, he said, is simple: Fewer people want to own and work at Christmas tree farms.

“There’s been a huge decline in acres produced and a decline in trees produced because of that,” explained Hann, who is also the promotions director for the Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers Association. “Just like the dairy farms where they were losing small dairies, the same thing is happening to us – people don’t want to take over the small farms. So, we’ve gone to bigger producers and less acreage growing.”

A major reason that workers and farm owners are so reluctant to take on crops like Christmas trees is that the turn-around time from planting to harvesting is so long.

“We’re growing a crop that grows only a foot a year,” continued Hann, “So we have to wait six, seven, eight years to harvest.”

A sign with illustrations of coniferous trees and the words "Blue Spruce" stands in a field of growing coniferous trees, with hilltops covered by leafless deciduous trees on the horizon under a cloudy sky.

Blue spruce destined to become Christmas trees grow in rows at Hann’s Christmas Tree Farm on Dec. 10, 2024, n the town of Oregon in south-central Wisconsin. The farm’s owner explained Christmas tree farms typically need to grow their crops for six to eight years before they’re ready for harvest. (Credit: Steven Potter / PBS Wisconsin)

Furthermore, Hann noted that this work can be difficult.

“Christmas tree production is a very physical job,” he said. “We’re walking the rows, trimming tops, swinging a knife on the tree to shape it. And the youth of today, a lot of them don’t want to do that kind of farming.”

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the number of Christmas trees harvested in Wisconsin has dropped 63% over the last 20 years.

Back in 2002, a USDA survey found that more than 1.6 million trees were harvested in the state. But in 2022 – the most recent year USDA data is available – that number had dropped to just more than 600,000 Christmas trees.

The number of Wisconsin farms where Christmas trees are grown and cut also dropped over that same period, from 916 farms in 2002 to just 611 in 2022, a decline of more than 33%.

Hann noted that wholesale operations where retailers sell Christmas trees out of their parking lots have decreased over recent years.

“The big box stores and those kinds of sellers are declining,” he said. “I think people are shifting to farms like mine where it’s a choose-and-cut farm. I also sell almost as many pre-cut trees at my farm as I do choose-and-cut trees.”

Hann added his 47-acre farm has almost 90,000 trees growing, and 6,000 of them are harvested each year.

Fake plastic trees are also a bit of a factor.

“In the ’90s, we were kind of just sitting on our laurels thinking we were doing great, and then the artificial tree industry kind of snuck up on us,” Hann explained. “They started producing a more realistic product, and people started buying artificial trees.”

“But for the most part, if people want a real tree, they get a real tree – they want that smell,” he continued. “People also want the event of going out and picking out or going to a farm and cutting their own tree – it’s agritourism.”

To cover rising worker wages, the cost for Christmas trees has gone up by about $25 since the late 2010s and the average tree cost is around $100 for an 8-foot tree, said Hann.

: Fresh-cut Christmas trees are displayed inside and outside of a shed at Hann’s Christmas Tree Farm on Dec. 10, 2024, in the town of Oregon in south-central Wisconsin. The owner of the farm explained that the typical price for live trees has increased by roughly one-third since the late 2010s. (Credit: Steven Potter / PBS Wisconsin)

: An employee at Hann’s Christmas Tree Farm uses a tree baler to wrap netting around a fresh-cut tree on Dec. 10, 2022, in the town of Oregon in south-central Wisconsin. The owner of the farm touted the experience of purchasing a free-cut Christmas tree as an example of agritourism. (Credit: Steven Potter / PBS Wisconsin)

Prices went up during the peak pandemic years — and so did demand.

“During the COVID years, we were cutting anything that was green from five feet and up, and that really affected us for the next three or four years,” Hann said. “Because now you’ve cut a 5-foot tree, so now I only have 4-foot trees left, and I’ve got to wait four years to get an 8-foot tree. So I think as an industry, we’re really catching up from that too.”

He also noted that tree prices are plateauing.

“This is probably the first year I have not raised prices,” he said.

Wisconsin Christmas tree farming mirrors national trends

Wisconsin isn’t alone in the decline of Christmas tree production or the shrinking number of tree farms, but the national numbers are dropping more slowly, at least when it comes to the harvests.

According to the USDA Census of Agriculture, the number of trees harvested nationally has dropped from nearly 21 million in 2002 to just more than 14.5 million trees in 2022, a decline of about 30%. The number of Christmas tree farms around the country has dropped 27%, meanwhile, from almost 14,000 to just more than 10,000 farms over that 20-year span.

Marsha Gray, executive director of the Real Christmas Tree Board, a national research and promotion program for the Christmas tree farming industry, said artificial trees have cut into business.

“The impact is coming from artificial Christmas trees and consumers’ willingness to use that as their decoration in their home more readily today than they did 30 or 40 years ago,” she said.

Like Hann, Gray said the decline in the number of farms is a generational trend.

“People tend to age out, and many of the kids aren’t interested in running the family farm,” she said. “Christmas trees are a long-term investment, meaning when you plant those trees, you’re not going to sell your first one for ten years.”

Different types of cut coniferous trees are displayed in rows in a parking lot, with one line leaning against a wood and metal temporary fence set up next to a sidewalk in the foreground, with retail buildings and parking lot lights in the background under a cloudy sky.

Fresh-cut trees are displayed at the Northwoods Christmas Trees wholesale lot on Dec. 10, 2024, in Sun Prairie. Christmas tree farmers and industry boosters in Wisconsin emphasize that there are numerous options for purchasing fresh-cut Christmas trees during the holiday season. (Credit: PBS Wisconsin)

Hann emphasized that there is no Christmas tree shortage in Wisconsin or elsewhere in the country.

“When you look at the numbers declining, that was the industry rightsizing itself in a reality where people are not buying as many real trees. Now we’re at a point of having enough trees for the market,” said Gray.

“There’s always a Christmas tree for everyone who wants one,” she adamantly added.

Gray and Hann shared hope for the future of their industry because of a trickle of growth in the number of Christmas tree farms being purchased by younger farmers.

Nationally, according to USDA numbers, there was a slight bump of 26 more Christmas tree farms from 2017 to 2022. The number of farms in Wisconsin grew by 9 during that period.

“I’ve worked for this industry for 25 years, and the last 10 years is the first time I remember seeing new growers being young people. Some of them are saying, ‘We want to raise our kids maybe in a more rural setting,’ and they may be buying out a farm that the parents are done with and the kids aren’t interested in,” she said. “They see this as an opportunity. Sometimes they’re starting fresh, but sometimes they’re working with someone who’s already done it so they’re not starting completely from scratch.”

Hann agreed, saying he’s seen membership in the Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers Association dip overall from 400 members in the 1990s to around 170 members in 2024. However, the group has been gaining 6-8 new farm members every year in recent years.

“I think we bottomed out but now, we are adding growers,” he said. “It’s exciting to see some of these 25 or 30-year-old growers who are either starting a family farm, or it’s been someone who needed a hobby and bought 80 acres just to plant Christmas trees.”