By MARIE CARTER
Special to Farm & Country

Government grinches are stealing some of this
year's holiday cheer from Ontario Christmas tree
growers.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has imposed a
quarantine on central Ontario growers, in an effort
to control the spread of pine shoot beetles to
northern forests and other provinces.
Ontario's largest producers of trees for export are
incurring extra paperwork and labour costs to have
trees and fields certified free of the pests by
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The costs are
just one more handicap in the struggle to stay
competitive on an uneven playing field with U.S.
growers, say members of the Christmas Tree Growers'
Association of Ontario.
The pine shoot beetle (Tomicus piniperda) has been
causing major problems for the forest industry in
Europe and Asia. It was first found in North
America near Cleveland, Ohio, in July, 1992, and
has since been found in other areas around the
Great Lakes. Quarantines have been imposed in
several U.S. states. Ontario's Brant, Dufferin,
Grey, Oxford, Simcoe and Waterloo counties as well
as eight other counties in the Toronto-Niagara
horseshoe have been quarantined.
Young pine tree growth is the exclusive diet of the
pine shoot beetle; scotch pine, which makes up
about 80 per cent of Ontario's Christmas tree
production, is its preferred food. "The beetle is
not really a threat to Christmas trees and nursery
stock since the annual shearing will remove
affected shoots," says Hubert Will, manager of the
Christmas Tree Growers. Since beetles over-winter
in the base of the tree, which is left behind at
cutting, they don't pose a nuisance for consumers
either.
"The real danger is that the beetle becomes
established in lumber stands where growth and
yields can become seriously affected," says Will.
Quarantines have been imposed by the federal
government in hopes of controlling the beetles'
spread to northern pine forests and other
provinces.
Not all 200 members of the association are affected
by the quarantines, says Will. Since quarantined
counties are home to Ontario's largest producers,
however, a "major percentage" of total acreage is
affected. Ontario's largest Christmas tree
producer, Somerville Nurseries, Alliston, which has
up to 3,000 acres of Christmas tree crops, is in
the quarantined area even though no beetle
infestations have been found on that operation.
"One or two beetles were discovered in the south of
the county and the whole county was quarantined,"
says Jim Turner, president of the association.
Turner, also affected by the quarantine, says
producers have worked with government to streamline
and clarify government standards for having fields
meet "pine shoot beetle-free status". To get a
clean bill of health, growers will pay an $80
inspection fee for fields instead of the
$60-per-load charge. But, says Will, individual
growers find the certification process "costly
because of the manual labour involved in meeting
criteria, especially for larger growers."
It's larger growers in the central Ontario region
who have incurred the greatest costs. At Somerville
Nurseries, manager Paul Fraser has dedicated an
employee part-time to deal with the red tape and
extra meetings with government officials.
Additional costs are also incurred in having
Somerville Nurseries' thousands of acres meet
inspection standards, which include sawing off
stumps to ground level and clearing all debris of
two inches or more in diameter.
"That's a pretty significant increase in cost when
you consider the sheer number of stumps on large
acreages," says Will. 
Other association members such as Bill Sloan Jr. of
Bothwell, aren't affected. Sloan's operation,
outside the quarantined area, wholesales about
30,000 trees annually and direct markets another
2,500 through a U-Cut operation and is the largest
tree farm in western Ontario.
Even were Kent to be quarantined, Sloan's manager
Jim Gray says the beetles are "no problem". Five
years ago, the farm began moving away from scotch
pine and now has about two-thirds of its fields
planted in balsam and fraser fir. 
Below the snowbelt, in Kent's less severe climate
and sandy soils, switching to fir may be possible,
says Hubert Will, but for other growers further
north, scotch pine is likely to remain the
mainstay: "Fir is just more difficult and expensive
to grow."

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