If you're planning on buying a real Christmas tree this year, you should probably plan to pay a little more for that tree.  Tim O'Connor helps run the National Christmas Tree Association.  He said prices are going to be higher for a variety of reasons: 1.) because supplies are tight this year; 2.) demand is very strong; and 3.)the costs to produce Christmas trees, like almost every other product, have gone up quite a lot.

"The fertilizers have significantly increased; other input costs.  Trees aren't the same as some row crops where the inputs are hundreds of dollars per acre, trees don't require that kind of production maintenance.  But there's labor, there's trucking...there are costs incurred that all have gone up.  So, absolutely, it has much like every other sector where the cost of producing a Christmas tree is higher."

And so O'Connor says we can expect to pay, on average, about 10% more for our tree than we did last year.​

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