Why Christmas trees in Europe are so much cheaper than in Canada
CBC
Every year in late November, in the central square of Padua, Italy, a spectacular Christmas tree goes up.
Heavy with baubles and bright with lights (and the neon-lit signs of that year's corporate sponsors), it doesn't just mark the official beginning of the Christmas season. At more than 20 metres tall, it quickly becomes a local landmark, a beacon to tourists who've lost their bearings among the city's medieval streets.
An exquisite Nordmann fir like this, grown over more than two decades, can cost a city upwards of $200,000 to harvest, transport and decorate. Not everyone is buying 20-metre trees, but it wasn't long ago that this variety was so highly sought after in Europe that the then-head of Denmark's Christmas tree growers' association called it "the Rolls-Royce of Christmas trees," capable of fetching double the price of other, cheaper varieties.
Yet today, across the street from Padua's glimmering tree, you can find a two-metre (6½-foot) Nordmann fir for the rock-bottom price of 15 euros ($22), bundled in the corner of a dimly lit grocery store.
This fact suggests something is changing in Europe, where Christmas tree prices have been falling for the better part of the last decade — in stark contrast to Canada, where the average price in some regions for a six-foot (1.8-metre) tree is $75 or more.
While concrete data on Europe's Christmas tree markets can be hard to come by, it seems that despite shrinking forests, smaller farms and more people to supply, their trees today are much cheaper than Canada's. Why?
Like in Canada, only a few regions in Europe are responsible for the vast majority of Christmas tree production.
Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia dominate the Canadian industry, producing 80 per cent of the country's Christmas trees. In Europe, it's Denmark and Germany that take the lead, producing nearly half the trees sold on the continent.
Historically, in both places, these producers are actually many small-scale farms, growing trees on just a few dozen acres of property. After all, Christmas trees make a good side hustle for farmers with idle land, a slow-growing crop that generates agricultural tourism in the off-season.
"In Austria, you can live off two hectares [five acres] of Christmas trees," said Claus Jerram Christensen, managing director of the Danish Christmas Tree Association. "You add some sheeps, and a family can live from just that."
That means that "when there are good prices, there are more growers," Christensen said. Farmers jump on the bandwagon and plant a few stands to cash in on high demand.
But trees like Nordmann firs take almost a decade to reach maturity.
"Eight to 10 years later … we have simply too many trees," he said. "The prices decline and people say this is not a good business anymore."
"Christmas tree growing looks romantic on the screen, but in reality, this is a brutal business," said Jay Zagorsky, an economist at Boston University's Questrom School of Business. "You have a relatively fragmented industry … [with growers] making independent decisions, very many years into the future, on low profit margins."
