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 r…
I agree that the tree destruction is a perfectly rationale reaction - but it is still an injustice. This quantity of waste is not free and not fully priced into the cost to produce the fruit. I think the emotional misalignment most people will feel at this announcement is a signal that there's a large missed externality that allowed margins on this produce to get too thin.
California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
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Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#52That'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.
> they'd grow diversified crops to sell locally This is out of touch, many of these farmers are 100+ miles from a large population center. They can’t move enough produce at a local store to stay in business.
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#53> 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.
How many kilos of peaches would you say you get through in an average day?
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#54> 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.
It is common in agriculture that there is no existing market in which the price would cover the cost of moving the crop to that market. Destroying the crop minimizes the loss to the farmer.
“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.”
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#55> 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.
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they'd grow diversified crops to sell locally This is out of touch, many of these farmers are 100+ miles from a large population center. They can’t move enough produce at a local store to stay in business.
And conversely you can't grow enough food local to a large population center to feed everyone.
https://www.patternlanguageindex.com/patterns/city-country-f...
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#57People 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 r…
Del Monte went out of business because there wasn't enough demand for the peaches. The company that purchased their assets is continuing to buy 24,000 tons of peaches, but the previous unsustainable business was buying a lot more. It's the excess fields that need to be repurposed to growing something that the market will absorb.
The reason the trees are being destroyed is so they can grow something else on the land. Something that comes with a sustainable business model for the current market demands. Yes, the trees are technically going to waste, but if we had forced the peaches to be grown and canned (as many comments are suggesting) then that would be a different kind of waste as they'd sit in warehouses while the land, resources, and labor were used to produce something people weren't buying instead of being used to produce foods they were buying.
In the article you can even see that the farm lobby was so powerful that they got the USDA to pay for the tree removal. The comments talking about farmers not being organized enough or powerful enough must be unaware of how powerful the farm lobby is and how much money they're able to secure from the government every year.
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#58Some local meat smoker is going to be very happy about all that peach wood. holy smokes!
A lot of the removed almond tree wood is sold to people like me up in the Sierras where we heat with it in the winter. Almond has significantly more energy per unit of volume that most other species of trees in our area. I don't like the smell of burning almond wood. I bet peach wood smells a lot better, but it would take a lot more space to store the same energy.
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#59People 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 r…
I agree that the tree destruction is a perfectly rationale reaction - but it is still an injustice. This quantity of waste is not free and not fully priced into the cost to produce the fruit. I think the emotional misalignment most people will feel at this announcement is a signal that there's a large missed externality that allowed margins on this produce to get too thin.
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#60People 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 r…
It's difficult for them because farmers are raised anti-union individualists that are at the mercy of middle-men. If they would cooperate, unionize even, they would be far more powerful than they are now.
I don’t think you have a clue what you’re talking about. And it’s a shame; unions actually deserve better representation than you just provided.