going forward, then? do you think more trees need to be planted to stave this off in the future? on our farm and we have drastically increased the number of trees we planted and added irrigation this past summer to outwitt mother nature. 8 to 10 years for a tree to be cut down and it will take several years to show up and affect the supply issue. bill: let s listen to the christmas tree lot owner. from new york city. watch. a lot of cannedian trees this year. there is a shortage of american trees on the market. right now the going rate for my trees is $20 a foot. 10 years ago it was $15 a foot. 15 years ago $6 a foot. bill: he is making your point for you. listen, good luck and now that the word is out, hopefully everybody can find their way to
dr. marty makary, pete hegseth, jason rantz and my speaking voice will be up next top of the hour. dana: finding the perfect christmas tree may be harder this year because of a nationwide shortage likely to be more expensive. supply chain disruptions and a persistent heat wave impacted the christmas tree crop. the owner of river view christmas tree farm in south dakota and joins us now. i spent time in south dakota and spent time there myself. what is happening with the supply chain and christmas trees? it has come down to the perfect storm this year. the issue started back in 2012 when we had a significant drought and a lot of seedling trees died. we were recovering from a recession. when farmers replanted probably didn t plant as much as we should have. in the recession we weren t selling the trees. then you fast forward to the last couple summers with less than adequate moisture. we haven t had the growth out
of the trees we would liked. you had a booming economy in the last four years and demand has been up. so a lot of these things we ve seen coming as an industry and able to plan and manage for but then this year the straw that broke our back was the transportation issues. unable to truck the trees and a labor shortage. it has been more than the industry could handle. bill: is this exclusive to south dakota? are you seeing other parts of the country? we re seeing it all over the country. what we run short on supply we generally truck in from neighboring states and we were unable to get pre-cut trees in this year due to a shortage and transportation issues. dana: it has become a real tradition for a lot of families, right, usually even on the day after thanksgiving or in the weekends right before christmas to go together to find the perfect tree, cut it down and take it home. how do you get on top of this