Agri-entertainment or bare essentials? Wisconsin’s Christmas tree market chooses between Santa and low prices | WUWM 89.7 FM

With the holidays around the corner, many Wisconsinites will be heading out for their annual Christmas tree purchase. But less trees are available, and there are about 60% less trees harvested than two decades ago, according to the USDA. This rate of decline is about double the national average.

Possible reasons for this decline include the popularity of artificial trees, a shock to production after the Great Recession and lingering weather-related setbacks like a 2013 drought.

Steven Potter is a freelance reporter for Milwaukee Magazine, who wrote about how Wisconsin’s Christmas tree suppliers are adjusting to an ever-changing market. He spoke with Lake Effect’s Sam Woods about market adjustments, and the future of this memory-making business.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Sam Woods: Wisconsin is still a big Christmas tree supplier today, but how has that business model changed in recent years?

Steve Potter: Like other businesses in agriculture, they need to continue to add on to attract customers. And there’s this thing called “agri-entertainment” going on right now where the Christmas tree producers want to stay in competition and do things that their competition isn’t doing. So they’ve begun to add on different features and different entertainment things. A lot of Christmas tree farms in Wisconsin have sleigh rides or they’ll have Santa come out. Some even have reindeer. They might have s’mores, they’re selling hot chocolate, they’re selling other items. So there’s a lot of expansion into the entertainment realm, which then provides a whole experience for the people to come and enjoy with their families. Of course, there’s also social media so there’s a lot of photo stations and things like that. So it’s a really expansive entertainment area now for some of the Christmas tree producers.

In your piece, you profile one of these kinds of agri-entertainment approaches to the Christmas tree business. But there’s another kind of stripped-down approach. Can you talk about that?

Sure. It seems that there’s two ways that Christmas tree producers are going these days. It’s the full-on agri-entertainment with the sleigh rides and the Santa and the photos and all of that. Or bare bones, where you just have the trees, and you’re handed a saw and you go out and cut it down and take it home. And that seems like the two approaches which are working for the tree producers in Wisconsin.

In your reporting, did you come across any reasons why a particular business might gravitate to the agri-entertainment versus that kind of bare bones, no roof, porta potty kind of approach?

Yeah, I think that for folks that do lean into the agri-entertainment, they do love to see the smiles on the people’s faces. They do it for the enjoyment, for providing that memory and that fun and that experience and that tradition for people. But it is a lot of work, right? They’ve got to arrange all of the staff. They’ve got to call up a Santa and get them there and do all of that.

But then the bare bones folks, they are catering to those people who maybe don’t have enough time or other things going on, and they just want to get out there, get a tree, still want to have the experience of getting a tree, but not have to pay also for all the frills and everything else.

When we’re thinking of the Christmas tree market as a whole, would you describe this business as lucrative?

It’s tough to say. I think the agri-entertainment, the tree producers that are out there doing a lot of things and selling a lot of things are doing pretty well because they keep building on it. But there has been a decline in business, certainly over the years, to where there are just not as many Christmas tree producers in the state for a number of reasons.

Can you get into those reasons?

Sure. I did talk with the folks from the Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers Association, and over the years, they’ve told me a couple different things. One reason that there are fewer Christmas tree producers in Wisconsin is that some folks just don’t want to take on that business from their parents. It’s a lot of work, and Christmas trees take years to grow. So they sell the land or change maybe to a different agriculture product. The other reason is there was the artificial or fake tree market. You know, a lot of those trees are pretty good now. It’s maybe a lot less headache than going out and getting a tree from a lot or from a farm when you can just pull it out of the basement. So that has had a big impact on the Christmas tree growers market.

To that point, there has been a decline in business and the number of harvested trees. It’s gone down 60% over the last 20 years in Wisconsin to where about 600,000 trees are now harvested per year, according to the USDA. Here in Wisconsin, they’ve gone down 60% [and] nationally have gone down about 30%. And there’s also been a dip in the number of Christmas tree growers in the state from around 900 to now 600.

You mentioned one of those factors being that young people are increasingly reluctant to get into this business. I also came across a couple articles talking about how the 2008 recession led to a shortage in Christmas trees eight years later. Are there other notable shocks to this market that are at play here that explain this decline?

I mean, weather is always a problem with agriculture, right? So if you have a bad weather year, if it’s very dry or you have an overgrowth of invasive species or something that can affect the product that you’re growing, that can certainly impact it. It’s not immediate impact because like we’ve been saying, it takes around a decade to grow a full Christmas tree. Or if your farm is struggling or if you have other financial needs that’s pulling your finances elsewhere, you may not be able to get out and to simply plant as many trees. You may not see that hit immediately, but then in the next few years you will. So a number of factors can come in and mess things up for folks.