PORTLAND — A survey of Oregon Christmas tree growers shows the industry continues to find its footing after years of oversupply that flooded the market with cheap trees, forcing hundreds of farms to go out of business or switch to less labor-intensive crops.

Growers cut and sold 3.44 million trees in 2020, down 27% compared to 2015, according to the survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The number of farms growing Christmas trees also fell from 690 to 490, and total acreage was reduced from 41,223 to 31,124 during the same period.

Lower supplies, in turn, have allowed prices to rebound significantly for growers. The average price per tree has almost doubled, from $17.90 in 2015 to $31.06 in 2020. The total value of sales increased 26% from $84.5 million to $106.9 million.

In short, growers are cutting fewer trees but making more money, said Casey Grogan of Silver Bells Tree Farm in Silverton.

“There’s not as many (trees) as there used to be,” Grogan said. “That’s what’s increasing the price of them.”

Silver Bells Tree Farm is a wholesale producer of Christmas trees, with about 400 acres of Noble and Nordmann firs. Grogan also serves on the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s Christmas Tree Licensing Committee, and is a past president of the Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Growers Association.

Nearly one-third of all U.S. Christmas trees come from Oregon. Most trees are grown in the Willamette Valley, particularly Clackamas and Marion counties.

Higher prices are great for growers, Grogan said, but the industry must be careful not to make trees so expensive that consumers opt for artificial ones instead.

After a five-year hiatus, Grogan is pushing the industry to conduct the survey every other year. The goal is to provide information that allows farms to make better planting decisions, and even out the industry’s boom-and-bust cycles.

”We can give the consumer a more consistent price, season to season,” Grogan said.

The most recent oversupply peaked around the time of the Great Recession in 2009-10, Grogan said. Then there were 1,633 farms growing Christmas trees in Oregon. Five years later, that number had plummeted by more than half.

”We were selling trees for less than the cost of production. As a result, we lost at least half of the growers in the Northwest,” Grogan said. “The ones that did stay in, they significantly reduced their acres. They couldn’t put the trees in like they used to.”

Now, plantings are inching back up as the industry has corrected itself. In 2016, growers planted approximately 4.2 million trees. In 2020, they planted 6.1 million trees.

”That’s what we want to keep an eye on,” Grogan said. “Now that the price is high, do we want to keep planting and planting? I’m really trying to get people to take a look at what we’ve done in the past, and not make the same mistakes.”

According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, growers expected to plant 5.83 million trees in 2021. It takes 6-10 years for new seedlings to reach maturity, depending on variety.

Extreme heat and drought is also expected to take a toll on this year’s crop, especially the younger trees, Grogan said.

”It was challenging for us, to say the least,” he said, referring to the “heat dome” that enveloped the Northwest earlier this summer. “I think quite a bit of growers are going to be cutting fewer trees than they anticipated.”

That being said, Grogan does not expect there will be a tree shortage come winter.

”Most of the trees are in good shape and there will be plenty of trees for harvest this year,” he said.

It is common, Grogan said, to have mortality in younger seedlings. While he expects the mortality rate will be higher this year, he did not have an immediate estimate.