Q: Where does a pagan ritual and forestry economics collide?
A: Boone, NC
Q: When?
A: The weekend after Thanksgiving
Q: Why?
A: To provide env-econ post fodder
A common site in the high country the weekend after Thanksgiving is a big SUV with a yule tree or two strapped to the top, heading back home to Winston-Salem or Charlotte after a "day in the mountains" fetching the tree (and doing a little shopping we hope). We also export these trees to far off lands (e.g., Raleigh, and even further) with temporary markets set up in ad-hoc locations (e.g., parking lots).
Luckily for our readers, being a student of religion (in college and currently in the pilgrims class at the local Episcopal church) and a professor of natural resource economics (about 10 years ago), I have a keen interest in both the pagan ritual and the forestry ... enjoy!
Here is the pagan part, and maybe how it became related to the Christian holiday known as Christmas, via Wikipedia:
Patron trees (for example, the Irminsul, Thor's Oak and the figurative Yggdrasil) held special significance for the ancient Germanic tribes, appearing throughout historic accounts as sacred symbols and objects. According to Adam of Bremen, in Scandinavia the Germanic pagan kings sacrificed nine males (the number nine is a significant number in Norse mythology) of each species at the sacred groves every ninth year.
[We need a Wiki editor: Each species of what?]
According to Church records, Saint Boniface (who, also according to Church records, had felled the Thor's Oak) attempted to Christianise the indigenous Germanic tribes by introducing the notion of trinity by using the cone-shaped evergreen trees because of their triangular appearance.
Dionysus in his Triumphant Return; behind the god, Victoria holds an evergreen.In the 13th century trees were nailed to the ceiling.
Personal note: I grew up with the holiday tree nailed to the ceiling and the tradition has continued into my 40s. Now I know its origins. My late father (Victoria rest his soul) who insisted on the nailing to the ceiling, must have been a 13th centurist. At least we didn't formally celebrate Festivus (informally? I don't like to write about that).
Here is the forestry part: From my mathematical economics course in graduate school, I know that the optimal (i.e., profit maximizing) time to cut down the tree is when the growth rate of the tree is equal to the interest rate. Since the growth rate is diminishing and the interest rate is constant, waiting another time period would cause the asset value to diminish.
This sets up the familiar marginal benefit-marginal cost framework, with the interest rate as the opportunity cost of growing the tree and the tree's own growth as the marginal benefit. Additions to this model are awesome (which I learned while studying for the field exam ... not, I repeat, not in a course titled with an ironic adjective "intertemporal allocation of natural resources"):
- If there is an additional opportunity cost to growth (e.g., planting more trees [optimal rotation], a Wal-Mart parking lot, etc) then the model suggests cutting the trees down sooner.
- If production practices create a negative externality (e.g., massive does of fertilizer pollutes groundwater -- don't live downslope from a Christmas tree farm), then cut the trees down sooner (since this is a market failure we ought to tax the Christmas tree -- more on this in a later post as I get Grinchier and Grinchier).
- If there is risk of drought, pest or fire, the marginal benefit curve shifts down and you ought to cut the trees down earlier.
Yet, a naive application of the model is unwise. Only those educated in the NCSU Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources could have foreseen this (Christmas trees live, despite drought):
Despite the drought that parched much of the state, the scrappy, drought-tolerant evergreens toughed it out just fine. Though less abundant, the rains came at the right times, culminating with an October dousing, providing the trees a good drink of water before they were harvested.
Many growers say they didn't lose mature trees and that they are charging prices in line with last year's. The trees are not brittle, off-color or sickly.
...
An 8-foot-tall Fraser fir, perennially among the most popular sizes, is selling there for $65 to $80, depending on its form and shape.
The Fraser fir, regarded as the king of North Carolina's Christmas trees, accounts for 95 percent of the state's Christmas tree market. ...
However, the drought wiped out between 20 percent and 40 percent of the state's first-year Christmas trees, estimates Bill Glenn, a Christmas tree marketing specialist in Asheville with the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The immature trees died of thirst, awaiting rains that came too late.
[If there were a futures market for Christmas trees, you'd buy the 7 (I think it is about 7) year contract right now! And watch the 7 year price rise in advance of the scarcity.]
The fate of the state's Christmas trees is not idle speculation. North Carolina's $134 million Christmas tree industry generates more tree sales than any other state's and supplies more than a quarter of the nation's Christmas trees. This year's official White House Christmas tree is an 18 1/2-foot-tall Fraser fir from Ashe County, one of the state's tree-intensive farming regions.
How many trees is that? Using the familiar TR = P x Q, $134 million in total revenue and a $70 price suggess about 2 million trees per year. That should satisfy about 5 million people with the remainder purchasing from the artificial tree market and others pursuing their own holiday rituals.
Ashe County is the next county over. I guess I'll be heading over there in the next week or so to purchase my 8 foot tree and nail it to the ceiling. I'm starting to feel that warm, pagan ritual spirit!
