Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sfgate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 473 posts

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

#131

Post by lifis »

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #100

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.

Why? From searches and LLMs it seems it costs $50-100 to move a tonne 1000 km via truck, giving 0.05-0.10 $/kg for a supermarket 500km away. Fruit prices at at least $4.5/kg for peaches, 3.75$/kg for apples 1.45$/kg. So transport cost seems negligible and if fruit is given away for free, it seems it would be very profitable for any supermarket in region to show up with a truck. What's missing in this analysis?

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

#132

Post by gdhkgdhkvff »

rf15 wrote: post #107
Aurornis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A situation like this bring out many comments that reveal a very low understanding of basic economics (and a low rate of reading the article). 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 repurpo…

> A situation like this bring out many comments that reveal a very low understanding of basic economics (and a low rate of reading the article). And a very low understanding of basic biology. A bunch of rotten fruit is _exceptionally valuable_ in many parts of the world. There's a million things you can do with it, alcohol, fertilizer... edit: me right now I'm in a position where I could really use truckloads of rott…

If rotten fruit was exceptionally valuable, then people would be paying exceptional amounts of money for it instead of wondering where they can get truckloads of it for free.

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

#133

Post by brailsafe »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #122
dylan604 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and call it great injustice. The great injustice is very much me paying however much per pound of peaches when the supply is so great that they should be much cheaper. However, if these are the trees that grow rock hard peaches that never soften as they ripen with no flavor, then bulldoze them all and say good riddance. Hell, might as well take of and nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

>However, if these are the trees that grow rock hard peaches that never soften as they ripen with no flavor, t That's not even how trees work. If they wanted, those same trees could grow plums within 2 years, or almonds, or pretty much any stonefruit except cherries (which tend to be incompatible).

Yes, trees are magical, but there are better peaches to grow of these are the ones being grown

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

#134

Post by brailsafe »

dylan604 wrote: post #64
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…

> and call it great injustice. The great injustice is very much me paying however much per pound of peaches when the supply is so great that they should be much cheaper. However, if these are the trees that grow rock hard peaches that never soften as they ripen with no flavor, then bulldoze them all and say good riddance. Hell, might as well take of and nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

You want BC Okanagan peaches. I've found them to be dramatically better than anything that's come out of the states for some reason. Granted, most of those would probably be coming from the western half of the country

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

#135

Post by janalsncm »

quotz wrote: post #82
dylan604 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and call it great injustice. The great injustice is very much me paying however much per pound of peaches when the supply is so great that they should be much cheaper. However, if these are the trees that grow rock hard peaches that never soften as they ripen with no flavor, then bulldoze them all and say good riddance. Hell, might as well take of and nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

When I moved to the US from southern Europe I was so horrified by the lack of taste of any fruit I tried, particularly the peaches and plums. I moved back to Europe and not a small factor was the lack of good produce and food in general. Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.

You are comparing fruit in a prime stone fruit-growing region to the US.

The US is big and fruit needs to be refrigerated to be transported. Refrigeration kills aromatics.

I assume you would have a similar experience buying plums in Germany. Similarly, if you bought stone fruit in California where it is grown, it would taste good.

> stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice

Unless you are willing to pay $30/peach for them to be flown next day on a jet, peaches in New York are not going to taste as good as they do off the tree.

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

#136

Post by _DeadFred_ »

pc86 wrote: post #83
hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

What makes you think the government is remotely qualified to run a canning operation, a logistics operation, a warehousing operation, an HR operation, and a finance operation for peaches? Also which government? Because there are at least 3-5 relevant ones here, maybe more.

The government is able to do all of this for an entire literal army of people, spread across the entire world. And for an additional smaller army we call the Marines. Only difference is we add peaches on top of the canning of lead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_City_Army_Ammunition_Plan...

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

#137

Post by throw0101c »

pc86 wrote: post #83
hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

What makes you think the government is remotely qualified to run a canning operation, a logistics operation, a warehousing operation, an HR operation, and a finance operation for peaches? Also which government? Because there are at least 3-5 relevant ones here, maybe more.

> What makes you think the government is remotely qualified to run a canning operation, a logistics operation, a warehousing operation, an HR operation, and a finance operation for peaches?

The DoD (for one) runs lots of logistics, warehousing, HR (2.8M), and finance stuff.

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

#138

Post by ch4s3 »

bdangubic wrote: post #14
ch4s3 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The impacts pushed a delegation of California lawmakers to ask the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide financial support to the fruit growers. Seems like the opposite of the free market. Large farmers are usually the first people lining up for a government handout, and their representatives are regularly anti-market types.

this is exactly right, all US farmers are basically socialists and they consistently vote for the one of the most socialists parties on the planet - the republican party

We have 2 anti-capitalist parties right now that shower largess on on their favored interests.

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

#139

Post by janalsncm »

boringg wrote: post #126
quotz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I moved to the US from southern Europe I was so horrified by the lack of taste of any fruit I tried, particularly the peaches and plums. I moved back to Europe and not a small factor was the lack of good produce and food in general. Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.

This is a funny statement in that California has probably the best agricultural produce on the planet. If you were in say Texas or Georgia - you could be forgiven for your statement. Bay area produce is unparalleled - Tomatoes, peaches, figs, strawberries, etc. More organic growers if thats what you care about - high quality growers. There is also massive commercial growers doing high volume low cost but you do need…

It’s bit like complaining that they had plenty of skiing opportunities in Switzerland, but when they moved to Florida there weren’t any.

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

#140

Post by Cakez0r »

fckgw wrote: post #129
Cakez0r wrote: post #120

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!

The money isn't going to Del Monte, it's going to their suppliers. The ones who lost money when Del Monte closed.

Yes, i have no issue with that, but why is the money coming from the tax payer instead of del monte?
Post reply on HN