Maybe picker/cutter shortages? Like instead of picking the strawberries or cutting trees with 10 people in one week 5 people do it in two weeks? To fill up one truck load.
I don't think it has anything to do with the EU or not. Rather I think there has been some industry wide "efficiency gain" in picking/harvesting/cutting stuff that make the product worse when you buy it.
Obviously the Christmas tree can be a fluke. But so was my mom's and my tree the year earlier. In my childhood they still had like moist resin and smelled alot. But the ones you buy nowadays are dull.
“Pine needles”, as we say in the business