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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

#351

Post by roncesvalles »

hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #69
hluska wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh yeah, this was Del Monte’s business model. The issue is that the company that owns the canning plants (Del Monte) went bankrupt. There is no canning capacity available to do this. How did you possibly miss the point by this far? It’s like trying to drive to Los Angeles and ending up on Pluto.

The government would step in and take over operations. This is why we don't need profit-driven companies responsible for food supply. By all means let Del Monte's managers try their hand in some other industry if they couldn't make it work (or not, because they couldn't make it work).

>The government would step in and take over operations.

No. A government shouldn't do this unless canned peaches are especially important for national security or something like that.

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

#352

Post by roncesvalles »

delichon wrote: post #7

This is your fault for eating fewer canned peaches. The clingstone variety is bred for canning and not well suited to eating fresh.

Eating canned stuff seems to be going out of fashion as people realize about the Alzheimer's risk. There are basically no "new" canned food brands. People prefer frozen fruit to canned fruit, especially since frozen has gotten a lot of positive PR lately, e.g. "it's fresher than fresh produce at the supermarket!

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

#353

Post by jasomill »

nradov wrote: post #244
cogman10 wrote: post #237

Earlier 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…

People have this image of farmers as ignorant bumpkins, when owners of even small family farms are some of the most intelligent, objective, and economically-motivated businesspeople I've known.

The first IBM PC I ever used was in the home office of a farmer who was using it for economic forecasting. And I grew up in the middle of a large city (for reference, I had an Atari 800 at home, regularly used Apple ][s at school, my friends were raving about the newly-introduced Commodore 64, and the most impressive tech I had ever seen was a VAX 11/780).

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

#354

Post by hattmall »

cogman10 wrote: post #245
vasco wrote: post #242

Earlier 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…

>Full grown you are looking at about 20 lbs of fruit yearly.

Just from the poorly cared peach trees that grow around my house it has to be much more than 20 lbs of fruit yearly. That's only like 100 peaches. I've been to a pick your own peaches orchard and it was easy to fill a 5 gallon bucket from a single part of a tree. I know there are a lot of varieties but it has to be a lot more than 20lbs.

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

#355

Post by recursive-call »

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.

True, but carbs are being vilified in the media right now, and have been for a while, so public opinion on them (and especially sugar) is very negative

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

#356

Post by hattmall »

kelnos wrote: post #226
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…

> 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 provide food, banks scalp the interest between you and the government. They aren't the same at all. Farmers, even if they are megacorps are indispensable. Banks on the other hand serve basically no function in the modern era of financial activity.

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

#357

Post by recursive-call »

Legend2440 wrote: post #218
creationcomplex wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea what's happening in the USA do you lol. I can't speak to the fruit business, but let me assure you: people are starving, the cost of living crisis is a political weapon, SNAP is unfunded, and this nutrition is, as in Grapes of Wrath times, succumbing to the market, not to the lack of need. People are hungry, there's just no $$$ in feeding them. Shame.

No one in the US is starving outside of illness or drug abuse. 75% of the population is overweight, and the rate is even higher among poor people. We've had to invent new words like "food insecure" because actual starvation is a solved problem.

even if that was the case, there are still starving people in other parts of the world, and we’re still destroying food rather than giving it to them, because shipping food halfway across the world to give to people for free isn’t profitable

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

#358

Post by musicale »

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…

> 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...

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

#359

Post by UncleOxidant »

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…

> Del Monte went out of business because there wasn't enough demand for the peaches

How did this happen? It takes a long time before a peach tree seedling gets to the point where it can bear a significant amount of fruit. I'm going to guess about 10 years. Given that kind of delay, how did they get into a situation where there was this much over-production?

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

#360

Post by roxil »

kelnos wrote: post #281
pjc50 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an owner of an apple tree: that's great for about two months, but I don't have commercial quantities of cold storage.

We used to have a lemon tree. When it was producing, 80% of it went to waste. When it wasn't producing, we had to buy. It was still worth it, though. It required very little maintenance (pruning once a year, replace the batteries on the auto-irrigation system a couple times a year), so it was basically free.

My parents have the biggest walnut tree I've ever seen in their yard. It's a similar situation as you described with the lemon tree. During fall we would get dumped with walnuts, filling multiple boxes; more than any of us care to eat in a year. So for many years, we've been sharing our walnuts with the neighbors, some of them I've only ever seen, when they ring to ask for the walnuts. In return they bring us some of their produce every now and then: cherries, onions, eggs, apples, apple cider, freshly baked cakes and jam. I would have loved to trade you some walnuts for those lemons.
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