Supply chain crisis continues in the holiday period, real Christmas trees with higher prices due to short supply

From rising prices and high inflation to supply chain issues, Americans are having hard times for months now to find and buy everything from their favorite food to cars.

With entering the holiday season, the crisis continues and both businesses and customers are highly affected of the current situation.

As we approach Christmas and New Year, Christmas tree farmers are informing the public to buy their real Christmas tree on time if they want to have one before the holidays because the low supply will leave many without real tree this year.

“We’re probably going to run out of trees in early December,” said Bryan Price of Price’s Christmas Tree Farm.

Price is also the president of the South Carolina Christmas Tree Association with around 50 farms as members and he believes that most of the farmers will run out of stock shortly after they start selling trees.

According to Price, there has been Christmas trees shortage in the last couple of years, but because of the supply chain crisis this year, the situation will be much worse compared to previous years.

“There was a glut several years back, and people didn’t plant as many. Demand was down a little bit, and demand has come back up sharply in the last couple years, and so now they’re caught with not enough trees to go around,” he said, adding that weather events have also contributed to the short stock.

The supply chain crisis led to inflation and rising prices on everything this year and those who plan to buy real Christmas tree this holiday season will also have to pay a little bit more of what they were used to in the past.

“As the trees became short, prices have steadily risen up wholesale-wise,” Price said. “So we’ve tried to hold the line as much as we could, but wholesale prices have gone up so much on us. In some cases, it’s gone up $25 per tree.”

The low supply and high demand made farmers to “plant new trees like crazy recently”, but some types of trees need almost a decade until they are ready to be sold meaning that higher Christmas trees prices will be here in the upcoming years too.

“I order my trees a full year ahead, and we’ve been getting our trees, but we aren’t getting the numbers that we’d like to have,” Price said. “I know some lots were not able to open at all because they couldn’t get trees.”