Christmas trees going green.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

The last straw for Oregon Christmas tree grower Joe Sharp was when Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said last year that Americans should buy fake trees to prevent deforestation in the United States.

Sharp said that is a big lie that is costing the live tree industry millions.

"People listen to that and believe it," Sharp said. "It just isn't true. American Christmas trees are grown on farms just like other crops. The years of getting them out of the forest are gone."

Sharp decided that the industry needed a certification to prove its environmental credentials and reassure consumers that they were making the right choice when buying a live tree. And he wants to see the green sticker certification in place by the 2007 holiday season.

So this morning in Salem, Sharp and another major-league Christmas tree grower are rolling out a new "Tree Grower's Certification" program with the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

This is a big deal in Oregon, which is the top Christmas tree producing state in the nation - shipping 7 million cut trees a year with an average retail price of $15.60 each.

The new certification addresses techniques such as using cover crops between rows instead of herbicides, maintaining buffer zones along streams and returning rejected trees to the soil as mulch.

The top level of the three-level certification would cause dramatic changes in tree farming practices. But, at its lowest level, the certification would allow farmers to still get the green grower's certificate while, for example, still using insecticides and herbicides indiscriminately - making it more of a green goal than an environmental guarantee.

The idea of a certification program took root in the early 2000s when sales of the live trees slumped. By mid-decade, the retail value of live trees was $1.4 billion but fake tree sales reached $671 million - a sizable chunk out of the farmer's pocket, according to the National Christmas Tree Association.

Although live trees are renewable and recyclable, the growers were losing the who's-greener argument, even though U.S. environmentalists back the farmers' claim that live trees are the most eco-friendly way to go.

The fake trees are made of polyvinyl chloride, which is a source of the toxic, bioaccumulative substance dioxin and - sometimes - lead dust.

Sharp grew impatient that the national Christmas tree growing industry wasn't doing enough to counter China's environmental claims. "I wasn't willing to wait any longer," he said. He teamed up with another major league tree grower in Oregon to form the Coalition of Environmentally-Conscious Tree Growers. Together, they produce 1.7 million trees each year, or about one quarter of the state's annual Christmas tree crop.

"We're saying 'Wait a minute,' " Sharp said. "We've got to get the true story out there. That's what this about."

But promoting some of the Christmas tree industry practices is going to be a hard sell. Growers lean heavily on herbicides - sometimes sprayed aerially - during the first three years of tree growth, said Rick Fletcher, extension forester with the OSU Extension Service.

The sprays are needed to keep grasses and weeds from choking out or deforming the young trees, he said. The growers rely on 29 different chemical brews and rotate them to prevent chemical-resistant weeds from developing.

"Historically, farmers have sprayed just because that's what they did last year," Sharp admitted.

But Sharp - whose Yule Tree Farms has fields in Clackamas, Yamhill, Polk and Marion counties - and farmers like him are finding ways to cut back on herbicides and pesticides, he said.

Sharp has embraced integrated pest management, which seeks to use less insecticide so that beneficial insects, which normally keep damaging insects in check, aren't themselves destroyed by indiscriminate chemical application. Farmers scout their fields and spray only when necessary.

Sharp also is recognized as a leader in erosion control methods that keep silt out of rivers and streams. And he chips the misshapen trees that aren't suitable for sale, when historically the industry burned them.

Sharp has yet to ask an environmental group to endorse the new tree-growers certification, but Lisa Arkin of the Oregon Toxic Alliance said she is pleased with some of the provisions.

Arkin said reducing to only spot application of pesticides is important because the chemicals drift - including onto rural schools located near the fields.

"I applaud their efforts because any reduction in pesticides is a marvelous benefit to both environmental health and human health," Arkin said. "Not only is it safer for the family buying the tree but it's safer for the land and the water ways where it was grown."

But it's unclear whether the standards required for certification will be enough to encourage most Christmas tree farmers to follow Sharp's lead and reduce pesticide use.

The stakes are high. Farmers invest up to a decade growing each individual tree and can't afford to lose a lot of them - and consumers have exacting standards for quality, Fletcher said.

"We're selling a cut flower," he said. "All we've got to sell is the quality of the foliage. If the foliage is not high quality, we can't sell it."

Donna Porter, 73, of Porter's Yuletide Trees said it is possible to grow Christmas trees without any herbicides or insecticides. She has been doing it for 25 years at her farm five miles west of Eugene.

"I don't see any need to spray," she said. "It would be a waste of money, and I wouldn't have time anyway."

She grows noble, grand and Douglas firs on her 20-acre farm, and she says she'll match them for beauty with any of the state's mega growers.

But how does she keep the weed grasses from growing up, choking back and deforming the newly planted trees on all of those acres?

"I do a lot of mowing," she said.

The worst is the wild carrot - but she's got a remedy for that, too. "I'll just take time to put my shovel in the ground and it's gone," she said.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture has agreed to provide the auditing for the tree growers program. It will be a joint effort between the ODA's commodity certification - which helps farmers get their products to market - and its natural resources division, which enforces the state's environmental rules.

"The ODA could be considered to be an independent third party from some standpoint. They don't represent farmers. They represent the state of Oregon and the people of Oregon," Fletcher said.

Under the plan, ODA inspectors have discretion about when to inspect and reinspect. But they also will have discretion to give certification to farmers who barely meet the standards.

Sharp said they'll be tough.

"They're independent. They don't work for us. If you're not doing it, they're not going to give you the certification," he said.