Christmas Tree Checkoff Program

Last year the USDA approved the Christmas Tree Checkoff Program. The checkoff would have imposed a fee of 15 cents per tree on those who sold or imported more than 500 trees per year, and raised roughly $2 million a year to promote the Christmas tree industry. Then USDA abruptly put the checkoff program on hold. Now Christmas tree growers are hoping that the USDA will reinstate the program. Chris Aldrich, a Washington wholesale Christmas tree grower, talks about the controversial checkoff program and what stopped it in its tracks.

ALDRICH: What happened last year was really kind of a flubbed rollout with the Department of Agriculture, and they announced it a little too close to the season. We got some conservative pundits that tried to paint it as a Obama administration tax, just really misinformation that came out, and of course this year they weren’t going to touch that being so close to election.

There does remain hope that the checkoff program will go ahead as previously planned.

ALDRICH: The status of the checkoff program hasn’t changed as far as I know with the Department of Ag. It’s gone through its public comment periods and there was a lot of favorable comment toward it. The industry in general supports the federal marketing order. Most of the growers are hopeful that they’ll implement that this year now. If they can roll it out here in the spring of 2013 and have it implemented this year,I think it’s going to be great for the industry.

Aldrich explains what that would mean for him by way of cost.

ALDRICH: I’m a small grower, I probably do seven to ten thousand trees a year. It’s going to cost me something like fifteen cents a tree, and I’ll be delighted to have some marketing effort on behalf of the industry.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Ag Information Network.