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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

#161

Post by _diyar »

lifis wrote: post #131
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?

What‘s missing is considering why, if it were so easy, nobody has done that before they went out of business.

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

#162

Post by spockz »

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. What a powerful text. Where is it from?

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

#163

Post by cogman10 »

Aurornis wrote: post #57
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…

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…

The big thing I fear about this sort of destruction is that it takes a very long time for tree bearing fruit to start turning a profit. That means someone that wants to plant new trees needs to do so with the notion that they won't get any sort of return on investment for a decade.

My fear is that institutional farming does not have the long term fortitude to ever start growing a tree bearing crop. Once these trees are destroyed, they are gone for good regardless how the demand shifts.

A downturn of 2 or 3 years or crazy political maneuvers which kill off exports puts access to these fruit in jeopardy. And once they are out of the diet, it's very hard to get them reintroduced. That's a big part of the reason why the US has such a limited fruit diet in the first place (the other being that many fruits are very hard to ship).

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

#164

Post by kstrauser »

milch wrote: post #96
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…

IME there is a large difference in quality in what is available at the super market. Sure I can do a once a year road trip to Monterey. The average organic heirloom tomato at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's is worse than the average organic heirloom tomato at Spar

Maybe so, but I’d still think it’s more convenient to occasionally visit a local farmers market than to move to another continent.

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

#165

Post by colechristensen »

gdhkgdhkvff wrote: post #132
rf15 wrote: post #107

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). 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.

Right? It's not exceptionally valuable. It has some nonzero value doubtful that matches the cost to collect it and get it to the people who want it.

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

#166

Post by pjc50 »

heathrow83829 wrote: post #111
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…

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…

As an owner of an apple tree: that's great for about two months, but I don't have commercial quantities of cold storage.

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

#167

Post by colechristensen »

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.

What is unjust about cutting down an orchard producing a product people aren't buying?

This isn't pristine old growth forest, it has no great ecology.

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

#169

Post by Legend2440 »

Cakez0r wrote: post #140
fckgw wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Del monte filed for bankruptcy last year. That's why the cannery was closing down in the first place.

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

#170

Post by quotz »

doubled112 wrote: post #85
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.

My understanding is that it's all bred to be easier and faster to grow. Flavour isn't first in the value equation.

Yes. Flavour isnt the main factor, its easier and faster growing, not spoiling, basically all the factors that are what a supermarket asks for. Here in southern europe flavor is the main concern. The flavorless produce doesnt fly here because nobody would buy that crap. We have standards. When I was living in the US I was shopping in wholefoods only and buying the most expensive varieties of the produce, and it still sucked xD
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