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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

#71

Post by modeless »

munk-a wrote: post #34
clarionbell wrote: post #20

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.

A big part of the problem here is that Del Monte was the victim of several leveraged buyouts that had executives walking away with millions while the company was saddled with debt.

Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy

#72

Post by hluska »

oxag3n wrote: post #19

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.

> It was an easy, steady cash-positive business until it wasn't.

This is out of touch. Growing fruit is one of the most difficult tasks in farming.

Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy

#73

Post by bix6 »

modeless wrote: post #49
unglaublich wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm sorry, but this is completely wrong. California canning peach farmers are organized and crop prices are set by industry-wide bargaining with processors every year. Additionally, now that Del Monte is out of the business, the only remaining operating canneries are owned by a grower cooperative. It didn't save the industry. In fact, it may have led to the irrational planting of these trees that now need to be pulle…

He saw demand falling or what? What did he swap to?

Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy

#74

Post by hnthrow0287345 »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #66
hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a less profit driven world, we might stockpile these in cans and then later throw them away once they spoil, taking over the canning facilities and paying for the wages via taxes on things not needed for survival. We don't maximize food security though, we prefer profit, up to and including choosing not to feed people.

Farmers are literally subsidized to over-produce for food security.

Which of course is not enough due to other expenses:

https://www.fb.org/market-intel/farm-bankruptcies-continued-...

https://www.adamsandreese.com/the-ledger/rising-farm-distres...

And those farms get bought up and folded into for-profit operations. You simply can't fix this in the current system.

Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy

#75

Post by tracker1 »

hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #41
clarionbell wrote: post #20

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…

In a less profit driven world, we might stockpile these in cans and then later throw them away once they spoil, taking over the canning facilities and paying for the wages via taxes on things not needed for survival. We don't maximize food security though, we prefer profit, up to and including choosing not to feed people.

That's how we got mountain bunkers filled with cheese over the course of decades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvLMH0wb_0k

Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy

#76

Post by bix6 »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #56
sophacles wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And conversely you can't grow enough food local to a large population center to feed everyone.

Christopher Alexander figured this one out in A Pattern Language: https://www.patternlanguageindex.com/patterns/city-country-f...

Why didn’t we do this? Seems cool.

Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy

#78

Post by trollbridge »

rented_mule wrote: post #58
VladVladikoff wrote: post #25

Some local meat smoker is going to be very happy about all that peach wood. holy smokes!

There's a good chance of that, yes! Farmers tend to be very good at getting every bit of value out of things. I live in the Sierras, uphill from many of these peach trees. Near the peach trees are lots and lots of almond trees. Almond trees are rotated (removed and replaced with young trees) every couple of decades or so, so 3-5% are taken out every year. A lot of the removed almond tree wood is sold to people like m…

This is rapidly changing. As almond orchards get taken over by corporate farmers instead of smaller family farmers, they just chip the almond wood and discard it instead of dealing with waiting for various people to come in and get the almond wood.

(Source: my relatives in the Sac. Valley don’t heat with almond wood anymore.)

Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy

#79

Post by baggy_trough »

munk-a wrote: post #34
clarionbell wrote: post #20

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.

I don't know what you mean by 'injustice' - it seems to be a proxy for 'I don't like it when trees die'. Is there more?

Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy

#80

Post by tracker1 »

hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #69
hluska wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh yeah, this was Del Monte’s business model. The issue is that the company that owns the canning plants (Del Monte) went bankrupt. There is no canning capacity available to do this. How did you possibly miss the point by this far? It’s like trying to drive to Los Angeles and ending up on Pluto.

The government would step in and take over operations. This is why we don't need profit-driven companies responsible for food supply. By all means let Del Monte's managers try their hand in some other industry if they couldn't make it work (or not, because they couldn't make it work).

Do you really want a world without any fast food or snack foods? I mean, I think we consume way too much as a society, but I'd rather not have the government decide what I'm allowed to eat.

Have a conversation with someone who grew up in communist USSR/Russia sometime... It definitely isn't cool.

If we had govt controlled food supply, we'd never have the likes of hot sauce (sriracha, pace, etc) and would likely never have seen a lot of options form. For better and far, far worse.

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