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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

#371

Post by fuzzer371 »

gblargg wrote: post #110
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…

> if we had forced the peaches to be grown and canned (as many comments are suggesting) then that would be a different kind of waste as they'd sit in warehouses while the land, resources, and labor were used to produce something people weren't buying instead of being used to produce foods they were buying. Worse, the price would have to be lowered to bring up sales, which could put the other peach farmers into bankru…

Oh no. Lower costs for consumers? Oh the humanity!

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

#372

Post by [deleted] »

graeme wrote: post #364
musicale wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Del Monte went out of business because there wasn't enough demand for the peaches They appear to have gone out of business because of massive debt from a leveraged buyout, combined with other issues. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-private-equity-overcooke...

That doesn't change the fact that there isn't enough demand for canned peaches. If there were enough demand for peaches the farmers would sell the peaches, rather than destroy the peach trees.

[deleted]

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

#373

Post by Semaphor »

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…

We recently had two cases in Germany of farmers giving away hundreds of tons of potatoes, as they'd have been destroyed otherwise. In one case they were paid for, but the store didn't want them anymore, in the other case it was overproduction and not worth transporting at the price they'd fetch.

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

#374

Post by xnx »

Aurornis wrote: post #288
gblargg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we had forced the peaches to be grown and canned (as many comments are suggesting) then that would be a different kind of waste as they'd sit in warehouses while the land, resources, and labor were used to produce something people weren't buying instead of being used to produce foods they were buying. Worse, the price would have to be lowered to bring up sales, which could put the other peach farmers into bankru…

If you try to force production and sale hard enough, the sale price can even go negative. If your warehouse is full of peaches nobody wants, you might be forced to sell them for negative dollars to take them away. It's either that, or you pay to have the waste management company dispose of them. So the price effectively goes negative from trying too hard to force something to happen.

Super-contango

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

#375

Post by TulliusCicero »

bsder wrote: post #292
nradov wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so weird for you to be fearful of something when you don't know how farming works. Every year farmers cut down a bunch of trees and plant new ones in response to costs and market demand. So what. This is routine and seldom makes the news. Canned fruit, like what these farmers were producing, has been losing popularity for years. You can't force consumers to like it.

> Canned fruit, like what these farmers were producing, has been losing popularity for years. You can't force consumers to like it. Has canned fruit actually lost popularity? Or did the grocery stores decide that the shelf space had a higher profit margin pushing something else? The last couple of times I tried to get canned fruit for a recipe I had to actively hunt for the particular cans of fruit I needed (I needed…

> Has canned fruit actually lost popularity?

Yes. Global supply chains have improved, so it's easier to get fresh fruit year round (or closer to it) than it used to be. If they can, people will choose fresh over canned, for obvious reasons.

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

#376

Post by RandallBrown »

chrneu wrote: post #345
pfdietz wrote: post #283

As I understand it, Del Monte made a few mistakes. The first was related to COVID. Sales of canned goods spiked during COVID. They misinterpreted this as a permanent change and invested accordingly. Second, they did not find a way to compete with store brands, which are no longer at a quality deficit vs. more expensive name brands like Del Monte. Finally, they didn't address changes in diet that (as I see it) makes s…

Correction: Carbs are not "unhealthy". That's a wildly inaccurate and broad thing to say. Excess consumption of processed and/or "unhealthy" carbs is unhealthy. Excess consumption of protein is also unhealthy. Same with fiber. I'm not commenting on anything else, just the fact that "carbs are recognized now as seriously unhealthy" is absolutely untrue.

> "carbs are recognized now as seriously unhealthy" is absolutely untrue

I don't think they meant that the medical community recognizes carbs as unhealthy. I think they meant the general public.

It's not true that carbs are unhealthy, but I think it is true that people recognize them as unhealthy.

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

#377

Post by Tanoc »

bsder wrote: post #292
nradov wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so weird for you to be fearful of something when you don't know how farming works. Every year farmers cut down a bunch of trees and plant new ones in response to costs and market demand. So what. This is routine and seldom makes the news. Canned fruit, like what these farmers were producing, has been losing popularity for years. You can't force consumers to like it.

> Canned fruit, like what these farmers were producing, has been losing popularity for years. You can't force consumers to like it. Has canned fruit actually lost popularity? Or did the grocery stores decide that the shelf space had a higher profit margin pushing something else? The last couple of times I tried to get canned fruit for a recipe I had to actively hunt for the particular cans of fruit I needed (I needed…

Where I live peaches are rare. It's all pears, oranges, and fruit cocktail. Not joking, there's five different variants of pears on the shelf at the grocery store, from sugar free to light syrup, and from three different brands. Canned plums? Nope. Apples? Nope. Strawberries? Nope. Cherries? Only around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

At the very least I can get all of those fresh and not canned, but honestly I'd prefer having canned versions as well because of all of the import uncertainty that ended up affecting things this past winter.

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

#378

Post by wahern »

DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #275
kelnos wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The comments talking about farmers not being organized enough or powerful enough must be unaware of how powerful the farm lobby is and how much money they're able to secure from the government every year. Most people don't realize how powerful farmers are in the US. We (rightly!) complain about Wall Street and bank bailouts when they happen, but I'd wager that we've given significantly more money to farmers over ti…

I would much rather there be a surplus of food production (driven by subsidies or whatever) even if it causes inefficiencies given that the alternative is significantly worse.

Regular surpluses can cause famines. This is what happened in East Africa in the 1980s. Cheap grains from elsewhere (Europe, US) caused farming to become unprofitable. Domestic/regional traditional farming of grains largely ceased as farmers moved to the cities. This happened very quickly, so consolidation and mechanization of farming to become competitive never happened. When cheap imported grains became unavailable in the 80s, for various reasons, it was too late. (The war in Ethiopia is often cited as the immediate cause, but people have always managed to farm through wars, usually at least enough to avoid the Ethiopian situation.)

It's an extreme case, but that same sort of pattern has happened repeatedly throughout history. Keeping some amount of farming economically sustainable is important. You don't necessarily need direct public subsidies, but you definitely want to avoid long periods where prices are too cheap to make farming of important crops not economically viable.

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

#379

Post by bestouff »

lenerdenator wrote: post #5
bestouff wrote: post #2

[flagged]

The Free Market magic hand™ does not apply to those who have capital and are facing losses. That's only when you don't have capital and are facing losses.

Exactly.

(I wonder why my comment has been deleted)

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

#380

Post by ToucanLoucan »

musicale wrote: post #358
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 They appear to have gone out of business because of massive debt from a leveraged buyout, combined with other issues. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-private-equity-overcooke...

Somebody really good at the economy needs to explain to me how a PE firm buys a company using the company it’s buying as collateral for that financing, and then somehow, that acquired company is the entity that debt is attached to.

Imagine if us poors could buy a Hummer EV financed against itself and then the truck had to self-drive for uber to pay its own payment, under penalty of being put in a crusher. Oh and you get paid by the thing for the privilege of being bought.

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