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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

#151

Post by quotz »

zabzonk wrote: post #99
kstrauser wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so odd to me. You can buy cheap, cost-optimized fruit in the US. You can also buy amazing produce that would blow your mind. My wife and I look forward to our annual road trip to Monterey partly because of the fruit stands we pass along the way where we'll get cherries so dark they're nearly black, and strawberries the size of my fist (no, really, I have pictures) that are sweet as sugar and incredibly delicio…

> strawberries the size of my fist No thanks. The most wonderful strawberries I ever tasted were wild ones picked on a disused Welsh railway line, probably a centimetre or so in size.

Not sure why you’re downvoted. The bigger the fruit the less sugars / nutrition it has per gram. A big reason why wild strawberries are so tasty is because theyre so small. I’ve had the fortune to forage for wild mountain strawberries in my native country in the balkans and their taste is nothing comparable to the farmed ones. Its like two different fruits. Once you try wild strawberries you will remember that experience forever

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

#152

Post by jfengel »

msarrel wrote: post #108
HoldOnAMinute wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new crop will be grapes of wrath

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…

Wow. That's really applicable, nearly a century later.

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

#153

Post by phkahler »

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…

Reminds me of stories about McDonalds introducing new menu items. The logistics of introducing things at all their locations is a major concern. Maybe they could have introduced a new peach desert or something, but like you said supply isn't the only thing - you need to move them around and process them too.

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

#154

Post by dylan604 »

psadauskas wrote: post #143
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.

Same with Maui Gold pineapples. I can't eat the Dole crap you get everywhere else. The ones at the markets in Maui are a completely different fruit, they're like candy. Whenever I go I eat them until my tongue burns from the citric acid. This is what happens when you optimize your food supply for profit instead of being edible; varieties are selected for yield, longevity and shipping rather than flavor or nutrients.…

> Whenever I go I eat them until my tongue burns from the citric acid.

Been to Maui once, and this was pretty much my exact experience as well. Thought I was the only weird one to do that. I only slowed down though until it got really bad before stopping. Wish I was smarter to stop earlier ::face-palm::

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

#155

Post by dylan604 »

benlivengood wrote: post #145
dylan604 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then please explain to me how trees work.

Grafting is how nearly 100% of many fruit varieties are grown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting

If the tree that is being grafted into is still producing these rock hard never ripining peaches, then the tree still needs to be eradicated. Not really sure what GP's problem with the solution was.

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

#156

Post by kstrauser »

quotz wrote: post #151
zabzonk wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> strawberries the size of my fist No thanks. The most wonderful strawberries I ever tasted were wild ones picked on a disused Welsh railway line, probably a centimetre or so in size.

Not sure why you’re downvoted. The bigger the fruit the less sugars / nutrition it has per gram. A big reason why wild strawberries are so tasty is because theyre so small. I’ve had the fortune to forage for wild mountain strawberries in my native country in the balkans and their taste is nothing comparable to the farmed ones. Its like two different fruits. Once you try wild strawberries you will remember that experi…

I’m glad we don’t have to decided between fat, bland berries and small, tasty ones. The fist-sized berry was as good as I’ve ever had anywhere.

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

#157

Post by quickthrowman »

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.

It’s an injustice to destroy orchards of commercially planted fruit trees that were bathed in pesticides for their entire life? I’m not seeing the injustice here, something else will be planted in place of the peach trees. It’s productive agricultural land.

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

#158

Post by selimthegrim »

tracker1 wrote: post #80
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).

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…

Uh, didn't they have "Southern sauce" for lack of a better translation?

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

#159

Post by kstrauser »

testfoobar wrote: post #105
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strawberries are not the size of fists. Ever wonder what they put in those?

Perhaps you haven't had the pleasure of eating fresh-picked strawberries from Watsonville on your drive down PCH 1. Strawberries that are shipped across the US (Watsonville produces something like 40%) are picked under-ripe and will not sweeten more along the way. Ripe, Watsonville farm-stand strawberries are something else entirely. They can indeed be fist sized. I encourage you to try them yourself. Alternatively,…

Yep, those are the ones. Those Watsonville strawberries are to die for.

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

#160

Post by fhn »

navigate8310 wrote: post #147
heathrow83829 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the difficulty of bringing produce to market is reflected in the cost structure. 90% of a food dollar goes towards all the efforts required to get food to the customer (transportation, packaging, warehousing, marketing, retail, etc). this is why I think the solution is to have people grow their own fruits in their own backyards and front yards. customers will save a huge amount of money and it's better for the enviro…

No one is stopping customers from growing their own food. What's stopping is the lack of expertise knowledge and time commitments it takes to harvest.

Not really. I buy bare-root tree from home depot, throw it into the ground, and get fruit in a few years. No fertilizer, no anything, just give it water and sun. It's not rocket science.
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