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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

#321

Post by ac29 »

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?

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.

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

#323

Post by goodmythical »

susiecambria wrote: post #308

All I could think about when I read the title was all the food insecure people who live in my little rural neck of the woods.

Well, all you've got to do is rent several thousand trucks to go pick them up "for free"

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

#324

Post by thomastjeffery »

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…

That's the problem with depending on monopoly for coordination.

Maybe if we didn't let one corporation control so much of the distribution chain, we would avoid both the decision to overproduce and the stagnation of overproduced goods.

Of course, the real problem is that we have accepted the notion that food must profit someone, even when we have too much of it.

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

#325

Post by jojobas »

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…

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.

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

#326

Post by bsder »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #313
bsder wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 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 copyright infringement that goes along with it. Apple being busted up means we have a division that actually focuses on computers in their own right rather than being a vestigial graft to the phone services division. Fedex was enough of a monopoly problem that Amazon bought carriers and, very painfully, set up its own delivery system.

> The world can barely support 1 ASML, imagine if we had to pay for 5 of them.

So, you prefer that we are two Chinese drone strikes from having a chip economy meltdown?

This is the kind of stuff that absolutely needs diversity. And part of the reason the ASML stuff is so expensive is because it doesn't have enough volume. So, for example, if the US had multiple fab lines that could consume the ASML machines, that would reduce the costs for ASML.

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

#327

Post by raddan »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #309
raddan wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Ap…

Agreed that fruit selection is very region-dependent. I grew up in the great lakes area - and we had super juicy peaches every summer. I have yet to find ONE peach in California in 20 years that measured up. Even when they're "ripe" and somewhat juicy, the texture is still rough/coarse and severely lacking in flavor.

The Midwest also has tart cherries which are quite wonderful! Except the tree in my own yard, I rarely encounter these outside the Midwest. If you want a great cherry pie, tart cherries are the way.

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

#328

Post by registeredcorn »

sophacles wrote: post #266
registeredcorn wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you see there being a realistic alternative? I realize we can't really go backward in time, but I would prefer if the farmers that lived close to where I am sold to people who live local to me. That can happen to some degree (open yard stands), and I like to do that for some of the smaller farms, but it's really a kind of "nice to have" rather than a "The market stocks stuff that was grown a town or two over" type…

The thing you imagine has never really been true. Rivers, seas and canals and later railroads and highways have always brought food to the city from as far as it could be transported before it spoiled. Rome got its wheat from Egypt and its olive oil from around the Mediterranean. Ancient egypt sent food up and down the nile to population centers in Cairo and Thebes. And so on.

Eh, I suppose that that's fair.

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

#329

Post by dehrmann »

I'm from that area and grew up around those sort of farms. A neighbor actually had peaches. Fruit canning had been in decline for a long time leading up to this (consumers prefer fresh), and most of the producers have long since moved away from canning peaches.
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