Frozen peaches are superior
California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
251–260 of 473 posts
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 thei…
They are going to naught now, so that the resources (land) can be better used. The trees were productive during their life.
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is rapidly changing. As almond orchards get taken over by corporate farmers instead of smaller family farmers, they just chip the almond wood and discard it instead of dealing with waiting for various people to come in and get the almond wood. (Source: my relatives in the Sac. Valley don’t heat with almond wood anymore.)
A lot of people are using pellet stoves/bbq; seems like you could sell the chipped wood to someone?
The extra effort to do something with the wood byproducts isn't worth it to the large, corporate, scaled-up farms. It means more labour to try to gather up the material and then selling wood pellets actually requires significant quality control; it's not like they can just scoop it up off the ground and sell it.
Another casualty of what happens during the shift from independent, family-run farms that often sold to grower's cooperatives to much larger, scaled-up operations that focus on wringing every last dollar out of efficiency and standardisation.
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, not typically. And I know this because I grew up around farmers and farmers that had orchards. Trees would be cut down and replaced, usually if the tree was sickly. But not because this year plums are doing better on the market. As I said, trees take a long time to bear fruit. It's not typical that a farmer will cut down a tree in their orchard in response to market pressure as that tree represents a huge investm…
Yes, I actually have farming experience. Farmers aren't naive about this stuff. They forecast future trends as best they can and will replace trees (or other crops) when it seems profitable. Newly planted fruit trees will generally start producing within a few years and output increases as the trees grow, then eventually levels off and declines as they age. A tree is just another capital asset with a limited lifespan…
Ok, then I'll just reissue my 2 questions
> If that were the case, then why are there so many peach trees currently? Why hasn't the entire orchard been replaced with olive trees?
I agree, that farmers forecast and switch up crops. But I disagree with you that you have a bunch of farmers that have mixed orchards setup because of that forecasting. It's not like wheat or barely where you could switch between the two even mid year if you were crazy enough.
I'd also point out that the first fruiting isn't exactly a bumper crop. It takes several more years after that first fruiting before you get to the point where a tree is fully productive.
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#255Earlier 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…
> 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…
Farmers switching from peaches to elsewise due to a lack of buyers represents a bailout?
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
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.
> Every year farmers cut down a bunch of trees and plant new ones in response to costs and market demand
I'll admit my experience is more with vineyard than orchards, but at least for grape, this isn't true. You only cut down old, unproductive vines, and market demand is not a factor. You never know how much you will produce YoY, so basically you try to only produce what your domain can handle. (The english translation for the following will be rough i realize).
On the "planting" side, you're wrong: a limited stock of "rootstock" (if this is the correct translation of "porte-greffe") is produced each year. As those are specific to a certain type of soil and take time to grow, you don't produce a ton each year. And vines "rootstock" are _a lot_ easier to grow than other trees (you have a mother-vine that you don't prune, you bury its branch in the soil, and over a year it will develop roots). My guess is that for orchards, your rootstock should take 3-4 years, so it isn't that easy.
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#257People 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…
Then why do they use so much land in the first place?
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 Peach trees take 2-3 years to bear fruit specially with grafting.
Stone fruit (like peaches) are all typically grafted. And that 2 to 3 years is when the trees first fruit, not when you get a full harvest from the tree. The 10 to 20 years is when the tree is fully mature and producing it's max amount of fruit. That first fruiting you are looking at something like 2 or 3 lbs of fruit. Full grown you are looking at about 20 lbs of fruit yearly. You can push up maturity by using a dwa…
I didn't say you'd get full harvest at 2 years, otherwise I don't think anything we've both said is incompatible
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#259I know this is naive but I wonder why the CCPA, together with the Department of Agriculture, chose not to purchase the peach canning facilities that Del Monte Foods was running. I suppose that it's more risk for the farmers in a world where canned peach sales are declining. I can't imagine it's easy to just clear cut a ton of trees though. 9 million sounds like nothing when it will take years for whatever new crop th…
I'm not sure that the Department of Agriculture could do a better job canning and selling peaches better than the previous company. I doubt they were just passing on profits on the way to bankruptcy ...
Re: California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stone fruit (like peaches) are all typically grafted. And that 2 to 3 years is when the trees first fruit, not when you get a full harvest from the tree. The 10 to 20 years is when the tree is fully mature and producing it's max amount of fruit. That first fruiting you are looking at something like 2 or 3 lbs of fruit. Full grown you are looking at about 20 lbs of fruit yearly. You can push up maturity by using a dwa…
I didn't say you'd get full harvest at 2 years, otherwise I don't think anything we've both said is incompatible
That's fair, I was mostly trying to point out that the first fruiting is very much not something you could really count on for a profit. You wouldn't want an orchard filled with trees that are first fruiting.