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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

#421

Post by philipallstar »

bsder wrote: post #326
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no advantage to horizontal integration for consumers in those industries. If anything, the value is negative. The fact that people are quite a bit happier about credit unions than Chase says everything you need to know. IMO this claim is just too strong. I think you'd end up breaking up (or trying to) Lloyds of London, Spacex, Fedex, DHL, Boeing, Panasonic, ASML, Google, Apple, and many other very speciali…

> I think you'd end up breaking up (or trying to) Lloyds of London, Spacex, Fedex, DHL, Boeing, Panasonic, ASML, Google, Apple, and many other very specialized companies. I see exemplars and no counterexamples. Boeing turned to garbage when it took on McDonnel-Douglas--we were better off with the separate companies. YouTube not being bought by Google means that you don't have a single giant ad juggernaut and the copy…

> YouTube not being bought by Google means that you don't have a single giant ad juggernaut and the copyright infringement that goes along with it

Then you probably didn't have YouTube, or if you did it would have twice as many ads, all likely served by Google and tracking integrated with Google.

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

#422

Post by gblargg »

port11 wrote: post #412
MassPikeMike wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, in 1790s America, farmers west of the Appalachians were growing plenty of corn, but because of bad roads the only feasible way to transport it to the much larger markets east of the mountains was as whiskey. When Alexander Hamilton imposed a tax on distilled spirits, the result was a "Whiskey Rebellion" in which George Washington himself rode out at the head of an army against other American citizens.

This type of trivia is why I found Bill Bryson’s “At Home” so entertaining. Tariff on windows? People cover them with bricks. Tariff on glass? Windows made of other materials. Tariff on… well, maybe stop designing tariffs if you can’t predict the outcome!

Or Reason's Great Moments in Unintended Consequences series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBuns9Evn1w9XhnH7vVh_7C65...

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

#423

Post by gblargg »

fuzzer371 wrote: post #371
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…

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

Yes, lower prices for a while, then very high prices and little availability for a long time. Think ahead.

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

#424

Post by pfdietz »

RandallBrown wrote: post #376
chrneu wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's right. I should have phrased that better.

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

#425

Post by pc86 »

masfuerte wrote: post #149
pc86 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not saying this is a good idea, but the government doesn't need to know how to micromanage these operations. The company already has employees who can do these things. All they need is to get paid. If the government decided that the final harvest of peaches needed to be canned, they could take over the business and pay to make it happen. edit: Actually, they don't even need to take over the business. Another comp…

If nobody else wants to buy 50,000 tons of canned peaches, why should the government use other people's tax revenue to buy those peaches? Why not just get rid of them (which is what we're doing)?

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

#426

Post by aworks »

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.

The price of oil going below zero during the pandemic was one of the most astounding economic events in my life. I wonder if anybody did try to instantly create some storage to take advantage of it.

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

#427

Post by aworks »

ac29 wrote: post #321
bsder wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Compared to Del Monte's heyday in the previous century? Absolutely. A remarkable amount of fruit is available all year, or most of the year now. I cant imagine eating canned fruit by choice.

I forgot it was even a thing.

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

#429

Post by NetMageSCW »

jojobas wrote: post #325
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…

There might be not enough demand to match the capacity they contracted and invested to can, but surely there is some demand. You'd think someone would buy out some of the contracts and the canning capacity at a discount and continue some sort of operation.

They are, but it is only 40% of what was previously contracted to be purchased.

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

#430

Post by [deleted] »

munk-a wrote: post #215
colechristensen wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think I just have a strange personal definition of injustice - but the effort put into growing this orchard to destroy is could have gone to better projects. The fact that so much of an investment is being wasted is, to me, a misallocation of resources that were unjustly allotted to this failed venture. A more just outcome would have been these resources and efforts going to projects that actually yielded benefits…

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