VOA常速英语:Christmas Tree Farmers Urge Americans to Buy Real Trees

For some families like the Villa Reals, there’s no substitute for a live Christmas tree.“Just you know watering it every day and just that smell especially the smell of it in our home just made it feel more Christmassy to us.”But that Christmassy smell can’t compete with convenience.Says Denise Shackleton who bought real trees for years before switching to an artificial one.“It was just too much work to put the real tree on my car, get it into the house.All of that it’s totally for convenience.”
像维拉瑞尔这样的一些家庭，没有任何东西可以替代活的圣诞树。“你知道，每天给树浇水，特别是我们可以闻到家里树的那种气味，这些都让我们感受到更多的圣诞气氛。”但圣诞节的气味不能与方便相媲美。买了很多年真树的丹尼斯·沙克尔顿开始转而购买人造的圣诞树。她说：“要把真正的树放在车上再运入房子里是非常麻烦的。所有这些都是为了方便。”
It’s estimated that between 75 and 80 percent of Americanswho have a Christmas tree now have an artificial one and the one billion-dollar market for fake trees is growing at about 4 percent a year,even though they can be reused again and again,and that’s bad news for the nearly 15,000 US farmers growing Christmas trees including fourth-generation tree farmer Casey Grogan.“This end over here was Nordmann fir...” he says that even though 25 to 30 million trees are sold each year,he has watched about half the fellow tree farmers around him go out of business in the past decade.“We’re an industry that would like to remain to be here and be around and if everybody buys an artificial tree, we’re not going to be here.”
据估计，百分之75到80拥有圣诞树的美国人现在都有一棵人造圣诞树，价值10亿美元的假圣诞树市场以每年约百分之四的速度增长。尽管它们可以被反复地重复使用，但对于种植圣诞树的近15000名美国农民来说，这是个坏消息，包括第四代树农凯思·格如根。“这边尽头是诺德曼冷杉……”他说，虽然每年有2500万到3000万棵树被卖掉，但在过去的十年里，他已经看到了他周围一半的树农破产了。“我们是一个希望在这附近保持下去的行业。如果每个人都买人造树，我们会离开这里。”
To encourage young families to start a real tree tradition,the Christmas tree promotion board launched a social media campaign this year with short movies on Instagram and Facebook.Following real families as they hunt for the perfect tree,“You like this one.” Cut it down and decorate it.An evergreen seedling takes 8 to 10 years to grow to maturity and while it’s difficult to predict demand a decade out.Tree farmers hope the enthusiasm for their harvest will grow as well and more American families will make real Christmas memories with a real tree.
今年，为了鼓励年轻人家庭继承真正的圣诞树传统，圣诞树推广委员会发起了一项社交媒体活动，在Instagram和Facebook上推出了一些短片。下面播放的是那些要真的圣诞树的家庭在寻找他们心中完美的树，“你喜欢这棵树。”把它砍下来然后装饰一下。一棵常绿的幼苗需要8-10年才能成熟，虽然很难预测十年后的需求量。树农希望收获的热情也会增长，希望更多的美国家庭会用真正的树来创造真正的圣诞节回忆。
Faith Lapidus VOA news
费思·皮德斯，美国之音新闻