Vass, NC – While artificial trees have become quite popular in the U.S., there is still nothing like a cut live tree to brighten the holidays and support U.S. farmers. There were over 27 million cut Christmas trees sold in the U.S. in 2010 with a value of over $976 million1. North Carolina leads the U.S. in production of the favorite Fraser Fir and is the number two producer of cut Christmas trees overall behind Oregon. The value of this crop to the state of North Carolina in 2009 was approximately $100 million2.
“Growing a successful Christmas tree crop requires more work than most people would think,” says Cline Church of Cline Church Nursery in Fleetwood, North Carolina. “The average crop cycle to bring in a tree that is 5 ½ to 7’ tall is around seven years. The labor commitment runs 125-175 hours per acre, with a good amount of those hours at harvest. We rush to get the trees cut within a narrow window so they are fresh and available to consumers locally. Most of the workers we hire are seasonal. We have tried to hire locally in the past but just couldn’t find enough workers for these temporary jobs. We’ve come to rely on getting labor from the Guest Worker program supported by the North Carolina Grower’s Association (NCGA) to get the crop out to the consumer.” The largest Christmas tree production in NC is in Ashe, Alleghany and Avery counties in the mountains. North Carolina growers harvest 5-6 million cut Christmas tree annually.
“The NCGA matches workers with farmers who require labor,” says Stan Eury, Executive Director of the North Carolina Growers Association. “We coordinate getting the H2-A visas so these workers may come into the country legally to work and provide transportation to and from their home country. The majority of the workers who harvest the Christmas trees have worked these same farms for years. The NCGA works to remove the burden of staffing from the farmers.” Farmers participating in the H2-A foreign worker program are required to provide free housing and a minimum wage of $9.30/hour.
The North Carolina Growers Association (www.ncgrowers.org) works to address the perpetual labor shortage faced by today’s farmers. The NCGA was founded in 1991 to assist North Carolina farmers by coordinating the H2-A visa process. The Association pools applications, assists with paperwork, deals with the Federal government, help farmers understand and meet their legal requirements, and acts as mediators between the employers and employees during the growing season. This minimizes fixed program costs for farmers and downtime for workers. In 2011, over 7,000 H2-A visa holders were brought in to work on 700 farms; 90% of these workers will return to North Carolina again next year. As the nation’s largest user of the H2-A agricultural “guest worker” programs, NCGA provides members with a workforce that is legal, reliable, and ready to ensure that crops are planted, maintained, and harvested in a timely fashion. The NCGA also provides assistance to similar organizations in other states that face farm labor shortages.
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1 http://www.christmastree.org/statistics_consumer.cfm#figures
2 http://ncchristmastrees.com/USDAstatistics.pdf
