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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

#201

Post by raddan »

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

There are also huge regional differences. When I interned one summer in the Bay Area I was stunned by the quality of the fruit available in California. I realized that, coming from Massachusetts, I had literally never experienced ripe versions of these things before (avocados stand out prominently in my mind).

That’s not to say that we can’t get amazing fruit in Massachusetts, but the selection is quite different. Apples, blueberries, raspberries, and cranberries are all fantastic. Oranges, peaches, sweet cherries, avocados, and many other things are mediocre at best. Getting great in-season fruit and produce is the primary reason why I now have a very large garden, but I need to temper my expectations even for some of the things I grow. Outside of a farmer’s market, this is the ONLY way to get a decent tomato in Massachusetts.

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

#202

Post by nradov »

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...

Bullshit. Christopher Alexander didn't know much about farming.

I actually read his whole book. Most of his "patterns" are kind of quaint and twee, the sort of things that seem superficially attractive to people with no real domain knowledge. Highly overrated.

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

#203

Post by munk-a »

colechristensen wrote: post #167
munk-a wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My opinion is that it's mainly unjust to have invested so much in growing it to destroy it. Mistakes happen and this is the right decision for now given the situation but it is wasteful.

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

#204

Post by lotsofpulp »

suzzer99 wrote: post #194
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…

> Del Monte went out of business because there wasn't enough demand for the peaches. Maybe if grocery store peaches weren't a fibrous, tasteless representation of a real fresh peach, they'd still be in business.

I find good stone fruit to be very fragile, and hence the economics probably don't support their sale outside of the stone fruit's season and an acceptable radius to where they grow. Peaches/nectarines/plums are easily one of the worst returns on investment when I buy fruit, and this is within a days' drive to California and PNW.

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

#205

Post by Aunche »

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…

I visited California a month ago and had some of the best strawberries I've ever had for $4/quart off the side of the road near Bakersfield (best I had was Oshii berries before they started to sell to grocers, but that was at luxury fruit prices).

The Sunnyvale farmers market was a different story though. Two of the vendors gave out samples. One of them tasted like Safeway strawberries. The other gave out these small strawberries that were really sweet, and this vendor had a lot more business even though their berries were $1 more expensive. However, the ones that the vendor actually sold were much bigger than the sample strawberries. I was suspicious, but bought them anyways. Sure enough, when I tried them, they tasted like Safeway strawberries. My takeaway from this experience is that America sells bad produce less so due to supply reasons and more so that Americans just have poor taste in produce.

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

#206

Post by munk-a »

baggy_trough wrote: post #79
munk-a wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Actually, for me, I primarily dislike needless waste. A bunch of resources were dedicated to growing this orchard which will all go to naught. It's better to destroy the orchard than sink even more effort into it if it'll be wasted in the end but the lack of forethought and planning is concerning.

It's a bit awkwardly worded but unjust isn't the word I'd specifically choose, it was inherited from the OP so maybe their view of what "injustice" meant was different and I just hijacked it. Dunno. I interpreted is as an unjust allocation of resources that could have been put to more productive uses.

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

#207

Post by nradov »

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?

Are there a lot of extra trucks and refrigerated trailers sitting around idle?

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

#209

Post by colechristensen »

munk-a wrote: post #203
colechristensen wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My opinion is that it's mainly unjust to have invested so much in growing it to destroy it. Mistakes happen and this is the right decision for now given the situation but it is wasteful.

I see people finding too often that change is injustice, and this is strange.

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

#210

Post by rini17 »

suzzer99 wrote: post #194
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…

> Del Monte went out of business because there wasn't enough demand for the peaches. Maybe if grocery store peaches weren't a fibrous, tasteless representation of a real fresh peach, they'd still be in business.

The peaches have similar problem with fungal diseases like bananas. The best tastiest varieties can't be mass grown anymore.
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