National Christmas Tree Convention Underway

The National Christmas Tree Association is meeting this week at their annual convention in North Carolina. When you walk into the National Christmas Tree Association Convention, you can find a little bit of everything. Christmas lights, of course, along with the tools for pruning and harvesting trees. About 450 growers and suppliers are on hand for the annual event.

“You know it’s a good learning experience for growers to get together and see how others are doing, what’s been successful, what’s not been successful,” said Rick Dungey with the National Christmas Tree Association.

Christmas trees are big business, the Association estimates a $1.1 billion industry annually in the U.S. which employs about 100,000 people. The USDA said Christmas trees brought in $100 million to the state in 2008, second in the nation in Christmas Tree production.

But the industry’s not immune to the economy.

“We’re having to work harder to sell the same amount of trees,” said David Cartner with Cartner Tree Farm in Avery County.

Cartner thinks the Green movement will increase sales because natural trees help the environment while they’re growing and can be recycled any number of ways, like mulching. But among the decorations and even Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, you won’t find any plastic trees.

“Having a plastic tree makes about as much sense to me as having plastic flowers for Valentines Day,” said Dungey.