Cornucopia’s Take: Christmas tree farms often use insecticides and other chemicals to stave off disease. Organic certified tree farms encourage biodiversity and use Integrated Pest Management to mitigate disease, weeds, and pest damage while protecting soil health.
Why You Should Buy An Organic Christmas Tree This Year
Rodale’s Organic Life
by Amy Grisak
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By avoiding insect sprays, these farms are making your holiday centerpiece even greener.
Christmas trees can be a boon to the environment, when grown with biodiversity in mind. They provide important habitat for birds and wildlife, reduce erosion, and bolster the local pollinators. All this, and they are a focal point in the festivities throughout the holiday season, says Mark Rohlfs of Santa & Sons Christmas Trees in Philomath, Oregon. Since 1983 his operation focused on using less chemicals, and Rohlfs was an instrumental part in the development of the Socially & Environmentally Responsible Farm (SERF) program in coordination with Landgren at Oregon State University.
“What we’re doing is approaching it in a more holistic way,” Rohlfs says. “There are certain practices you have to demonstrate for this certification program.” For example, the avoidance of insect sprays. Other basic tenets of the program include responsible use of the land and water, thereby reducing the possibility of erosion that impacts streams and other water resources. At Rohlf’s farm, they focus on creating a landscape that promotes biodiversity, as well as using Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques to handle weed, pest, and disease issues.
During years when insects are a problem beyond the scope of even the hungriest predatory insects, Rohlfs says the approach is to understand the lifecycle of the insects in order to apply a pesticide, even an organic one, at the appropriate time.
