Christmas Tree farmers launch FACTTS campaign to end Christmas Tree Promotion Board

1. Christmas Tree farmers launch FACTTS campaign to end Christmas Tree Promotion Board Farmers argue that the Christmas Tree Promotion Board (CTPB) does not help them sell more trees and the tree tax, along with CTPB should be eliminated In February 2018, a Virginia Christmas tree farmer sent an email in opposition to the Christmas Tree Promotion Board (CTPB) to many growers across the country. The response he received was overwhelming and revealed widespread opposition among fellow growers who had also been against the creation of the CTPB in 2014. Unfortunately, they had no chance to voice their disapproval at the time through a proper referendum; instead the CTPB was forced upon them by a thin slice of the Christmas tree industry and abetted by the National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA). To give voice to the opposition, three Christmas tree farmers - Frans J. Kok of Middleburg Christmas Tree Farm, Round Hill, VA; Kurt Gernerd of Stonehaven Farm, Purcellville, VA; and Jay Cox of Old Farm Christmas Place, Cape Elizabeth, Maine - with the digital strategy devised by Ash Shrivastav of San Francisco, CA created FACTTS, an association of Christmas tree farmers working to encourage votes against the continuance of the CTPB in an upcoming referendum in May 2018. The CTPB operates under the oversight of the Agricultural Marketing Service, a division of the US Department of Agriculture. It is one of 22 such promotion and research boards that have been authorized since 1966 primarily to promote commodities which are difficult to promote by individual farmers. With a total budget of about $500 million annually, including the Milk Board (“Got Milk?”), the Pork Board (“The Other White Meat”), and the Beef Board (Beef; What’s for Dinner”). The CTPB imposes an assessment or “tax” of $0.15 per tree on farmers who sell more than 500 Christmas trees annually and has the power to raise the tax to $0.20. Farmers must pay up or face severe penalties enforced through Federal enforcement powers. The CTPB uses it annual budget (currently between $1.5 and $2.0 million) to conduct research and to promote Christmas tree sales through advertising and marketing campaigns; in 2017 about half went to administration and overhead. FACTTS argues that no amount of advertising and marketing at the national level will increase public awareness of Christmas or the public understanding of the purpose and use of Christmas trees beyond the current saturation level consumers already face every Christmas. It points to evidence that national advertising and promotion of Christmas trees is a useless and frivolous waste of money. During the first three years of its existence, the CTPB spent about $3 million with no discernable effect on national sales. In the first year of CTPB activity, tree sales fell from 26.3 million trees in 2014 to 25.9 million trees in 2015; in the second year (2016) sales went up to 27.4 million trees, a number that is dwarfed by sales in the year before the CTPB was created (2013) of over 33 million trees. This erratic sales behavior is because national sales of Christmas trees are determined by many, fluctuating factors: the economic climate, Americans’ cultural inclinations and habits, the availability of trees, and importantly the weather during the sales season from Thanksgiving to early December. Christmas trees are sold at the local level by choose-and-cut farmers, local retailers with street Christmas tree lots, and big box stores and national chains. These sellers know that effective marketing is local; they know their neighborhoods and their clients and they know how to entice their clients to their sales-sites. FACTTS contacted 4,000 Christmas tree farmers twice since February 2018 and asked those farmers to voice their opinions through a straw poll on its website: www.FACTTS.org. Of respondents, the vast majority - over 90% - oppose the continuation of the CTPB. This is the first time that a national Commodities Promotion Board is seriously facing elimination by a vote of the affected farmers. FACTTS is a group of Christmas Tree farmers who want to eliminate the Tree Tax.