alt Hacker NewsCalifornia farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
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Clingstone peaches are best used for canning and this is one of the last canneries shutting down. The remaining CA cannery is buying what it can. This helps them remove now worthless trees and plant new crops. But it will take a generation to recover.
If you are in agriculture you understand how expensive to move things, as crazy as this sounds it’s practically only option many times.
Easy way to understand, they can announce it’s free come and get it and it wouldn’t have moved. Which clearly shows financially moving these don’t make sense.
This is your fault for eating fewer canned peaches. The clingstone variety is bred for canning and not well suited to eating fresh.
Some local meat smoker is going to be very happy about all that peach wood. holy smokes!
That's what happens when "family farms" rely on a large industrial complex and grow a mono-culture that doesn't have uses other than canning.
It was an easy, steady cash-positive business until it wasn't. If those farmers thought what is final product and who benefits from it most, they'd grow diversified crops to sell locally, which many California family farms do.
As I understand it, Del Monte made a few mistakes.
The first was related to COVID. Sales of canned goods spiked during COVID. They misinterpreted this as a permanent change and invested accordingly.
Second, they did not find a way to compete with store brands, which are no longer at a quality deficit vs. more expensive name brands like Del Monte.
Finally, they didn't address changes in diet that (as I see it) makes sugary syrupy tree candy not something people want to eat. Carbs are recognized now as seriously unhealthy. Ozempic and related drugs may have also affected this.
Serious question
Were these trees ever profitable? If the true cost of water resources were added?
If the true cost of picking them with US workers were paid?
Any other subsidy?
In my country there is a farm lobby too, but they rather look after the massive agribusiness at the expense of small farms. Is that the case in the US?
I have never seen a californian peach orchard (I have read Grapes of Wrath, if that counts!), are they a similar environmental disaster to the almond monoculture?
I know this is naive but I wonder why the CCPA, together with the Department of Agriculture, chose not to purchase the peach canning facilities that Del Monte Foods was running. I suppose that it's more risk for the farmers in a world where canned peach sales are declining. I can't imagine it's easy to just clear cut a ton of trees though. 9 million sounds like nothing when it will take years for whatever new crop they plant to fruit.
I'm from that area and grew up around those sort of farms. A neighbor actually had peaches. Fruit canning had been in decline for a long time leading up to this (consumers prefer fresh), and most of the producers have long since moved away from canning peaches.
I've worked in agtech for the last 20 years supplying CA with various equipment and there's a vast amount of food industry there. So, the unfortunate thing is, kind of need to let capitalism do its job here. Ultimately, there is a lot of opportunity and infrastructure for all kinds of crops. Either people adapt or someone will buy them out. The only time you should really worry is if anyone trys to rezone agricultural land for other purposes.
It seems that del monte proper is not actually declaring bankruptcy, so how is it that the American tax payer is left picking up the check on this one? Privatized profits, socialized losses!
Everybody gangsta about not needing government handouts until it's their own livelihood at stake.
Farmer here. We would not need these interventions if we simply had high tariffs on food. Farmers produce a commodity product that has to compete on price with food grown in countries with zero labor protections (Mexico cowboys earn $17 per day on average vs WA state cows boys who make $17 minimum per hour) and zero environmental protections (many chemicals are banned from use here and engines need very expensive pollution mitigation devices).
glad we piped all of that water off the Colorado river to them
While SFGate probably isn't renowned for its agricultural coverage, it'd be nice if there was at least a little context in their story. Is the demand for canned peaches dropping, or is production from other regions or countries displacing the California production, or what? What new crops might the farmers replace the trees with? Are there Peach Festivals or other local cultural events which will be impacted?
They should hire me to maintain those trees, they'll die faster that way.
Frozen peaches are superior
The Man from Del Monte said No?
> When a processing facility closes and 55,000 acres of fruit suddenly have nowhere to go — that’s not something a family farm can just absorb
Won't they at least sell the fruit to customers through grocery stores, where possible? I can see replacing the crops based on reduced future demand from the canneries, but surely the current fruit is usable.
What are the likely crops that would replace these? Is there chance for Agrivoltaics or straight up Solar being the most profitable opportunity?
Fruit isn’t very efficient.
So weird to have so many peach experts here, but I think it’s peachy.
You know something is dark when they had to make it exactly the infamous number 420k. For those who say "California has always had some satanic/dark element to it", they might be onto something huh?
This is all because :peach: now only means "buttocks" or "impeachment" isn't it? Who'd want to eat those anymore!
It’s all about maximizing value for creditors.
Similar with the Spirit bankruptcy, nobody wanted to save the company... they wanted to sell the assets to reduce losses.
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Nothing new here
“ The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” - John Steinbeck; Grapes of Wrath
So, they cut down the trees and do what? How is this supposed help anything?
All I could think about when I read the title was all the food insecure people who live in my little rural neck of the woods.
I wonder why they cannot be moved. There are machines that simply pluck them from the dirt and have them ready to go. They could auction them off for $1/each and still make a profit.
https://interestingengineering.com/lists/7-mighty-machines-f...
The only reason this is upvoted at all is people have an emotional attachment to trees. Note, there is no moral difference between a cultivated tree and a cultivate tulip or corn stalk. Its not like trees have a bigger brain because they are bigger, it doesnt work that way.
People underestimate how difficult it is to seek buyers for the amount of produce we are talking about here.
Farmers are specialists at growing things, not at moving them across great distances, marketing them to dozens small buyers and or starting up packing plants from scratch. They don't have enough trucks, people or packaging machines to move them around.
Maybe, they can take some portion for local use. But the rest will spoil, and rest of the land will be effectively unused, and a burden. The best option is to cut that as much as possible, and plant something else that actually sells.
Of course, people who never approached agriculture will be appalled at this, and call it great injustice.