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

sfgate.com

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

#311

Post by hn_acc1 »

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…

See my other comment: in 20+ years in the Bay Area, compared to 25 in SW Ontario (Canada): the BEST peach I've had in 20+ years in the Bay Area wouldn't even make it as "a good one" of the bunches we had every summer in Canada. Not sure where they came from, but from personal experience, Bay Area peaches suck REALLY hard. I've WANTED to find some good ones, because I miss them, and they're always super hard or already rotten.

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

#312

Post by xboxnolifes »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #175
xboxnolifes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmers are literally subsidized to over-produce for food security.

> for food security They overproduce for votes. Countries without farmer blocks swinging elections stockpile non-perishables for food security.

For both. With or without the voting block, they still serve the purpose of over-producing.

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

#313

Post by pinkmuffinere »

bsder wrote: post #305
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You simply decide that having less than 5 suppliers at any level is unacceptable and you bust companies up, repeatedly until you have those suppliers. This is a very extreme solution, and eliminates many of the benefits from horizontal integration even when the benefits are passed onto customers. Consider: - insurance companies - banking - utilities It’s also hard to implement. What counts as a supplier? Is Google…

> do they immediately get broken up? Yes. Always. At all levels. I might provide a limit below which that doesn't happen (like $50 million in revenue), but as soon as you cross that limit, scrutiny should be automatic. > This is a very extreme solution, and eliminates many of the benefits from horizontal integration even when the benefits are passed onto customers. Consider: - insurance companies - banking There is n…

> 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 specialized companies. These businesses would be very expensive if they could only supply 1/5 of the market, to the point that many people would be totally priced out. The world can barely support 1 ASML, imagine if we had to pay for 5 of them. We'd be sent back to the 2000s, and that's _just_ computing.

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

#314

Post by JumpCrisscross »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #312
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for food security They overproduce for votes. Countries without farmer blocks swinging elections stockpile non-perishables for food security.

For both. With or without the voting block, they still serve the purpose of over-producing.

> With or without the voting block, they still serve the purpose of over-producing

Overproduction is the method. Food security the aim. If they weren’t a swing voting block, the overproduction loses purpose.

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

#315

Post by PunchyHamster »

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…

Is wood that useless that they need to be paid to remove it ?

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

#316

Post by themafia »

oxag3n wrote: post #19

That's what happens when "family farms" rely on a large industrial complex and grow a mono-culture that doesn't have uses other than canning. It was an easy, steady cash-positive business until it wasn't. If those farmers thought what is final product and who benefits from it most, they'd grow diversified crops to sell locally, which many California family farms do.

Agricultural exports are a $23 billion dollar business in California alone. Which is about 1/3 of the crops grown.

This is what happens when the federal government uses a 1940s era plan to manage the economy.

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

#317

Post by traderj0e »

boringg wrote: post #123
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 mean you are destroying an entire forest that grows food, of course people are incensed, they are funding the destruction with money paid from taxes. Food is already bananas expensive. And it feels so terribly inefficient to just rip and replace. I fully understand that there is processing and logistics problems. This is not a misunderstanding of economics - its a wild misallocation of resources, and massive destru…

This idea sounds like continued misallocation

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

#318

Post by janalsncm »

realo wrote: post #191
janalsncm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are comparing fruit in a prime stone fruit-growing region to the US. The US is big and fruit needs to be refrigerated to be transported. Refrigeration kills aromatics. I assume you would have a similar experience buying plums in Germany. Similarly, if you bought stone fruit in California where it is grown, it would taste good. > stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice Unless you are willing to pay $30/…

Fill up the jet with 20,000 tons of peaches ... your price per peach will be different.

Assuming you mean 20 tons=40k lbs, this is around 120k peaches.

You would need revenue to cover such an expensive mode of transportation. Flying will probably be on the order of $20k. So you need $0.5/lb just for flight costs even if you can sell all of your peaches.

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

#320

Post by themafia »

nradov wrote: post #207
lifis wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes.

This is exactly why we have freight brokers.

People seem to think that farmers can't or won't own their own trucks and trailers. Almost everyone I know does.

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