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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

#401

Post by fragmede »

jasomill wrote: post #353
nradov wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sch…

Not to mention, the tech in modern tractors and all the other farm equipment these days is insane.

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

#402

Post by ErroneousBosh »

munk-a wrote: post #248
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd face the same problem with peaches as I do with laugenbrötchen, or more specifically sodium hydroxide. It's hygroscopic as all hell and I can only buy food grade stuff in 10 kilogram quantities. But I need like half a gram per dozen rolls, so I'd have to make around 50 batches of rolls a day to use it up before it goes off. My electric bill is going to be hellish.

Well if you make laugenbrötchen and I make peach cobbler then we can swap and our friends can have both! Experimental baking and cooking is a passion hobby of mine and it's such a nice topic that allows quick iteration and wild variations. Efficient usage of sodium hydroxide feels like a compelling use case for consumer grade at-home thorium MSRs - we've got to get the DoE in on this now.

> Well if you make laugenbrötchen and I make peach cobbler then we can swap and our friends can have both!

Distribution at scale becomes a problem when you're talking in the region of 600 rolls per day, but I figure some sort of compressed air cannon to shoot bags of them across town when they're still warm might be okay. Although, I'm in the UK, given the history of politically-driven homebrewed artillery enthusiasts, maybe drones would be better.

> consumer grade at-home thorium MSRs

Oho, now you're talking. Run a genny off it too, how are your 3kW solar panels looking *now*, guys? Oh you're only getting a wee bit from your feed-in tariff? Cool, cool, well there you go I guess...

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

#403

Post by jimnotgym »

Serious question

Were these trees ever profitable? If the true cost of water resources were added?

If the true cost of picking them with US workers were paid?

Any other subsidy?

In my country there is a farm lobby too, but they rather look after the massive agribusiness at the expense of small farms. Is that the case in the US?

I have never seen a californian peach orchard (I have read Grapes of Wrath, if that counts!), are they a similar environmental disaster to the almond monoculture?

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

#404

Post by barry-cotter »

wahern wrote: post #378
DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would much rather there be a surplus of food production (driven by subsidies or whatever) even if it causes inefficiencies given that the alternative is significantly worse.

Regular surpluses can cause famines. This is what happened in East Africa in the 1980s. Cheap grains from elsewhere (Europe, US) caused farming to become unprofitable. Domestic/regional traditional farming of grains largely ceased as farmers moved to the cities. This happened very quickly, so consolidation and mechanization of farming to become competitive never happened. When cheap imported grains became unavailable…

> The war in Ethiopia is often cited as the immediate cause, but people have always managed to farm through wars, usually at least enough to avoid the Ethiopian situation.

This isn’t true. See the Thirty Years War. There have been many wars in the past that have led to mass starvation by making the work of agriculture impossible. See also the depopulation of Sichuan during the Ming- Qing transition.

Separately the Ethiopian war was subsidised by western food aid and other aid to the Dengists.

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

#405

Post by barry-cotter »

datadeft wrote: post #243
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…

You are implying a centralized semi monopoly is the only way. If we had farmers to buyers direct distribution it would be much more resilient to this kind of problems.

You have not made any attempt as an argument. That’s a pure assertion without even an attempt at a causal chain. Being resilient to non-problems is a cost with no benefit.

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

#406

Post by nonfamous »

orwin wrote: post #256
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.

> 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 translati…

Ever wondered why there are few merlot vineyards in Napa these days? Dozens of vineyards are uprooted and replanted each year in that tiny valley alone in response to market demand.

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

#407

Post by nonfamous »

cogman10 wrote: post #237
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.

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…

There’s not a lot of overlap between prime citrus and prime olive farmland.

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

#408

Post by quotz »

milch wrote: post #96
kstrauser wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so odd to me. You can buy cheap, cost-optimized fruit in the US. You can also buy amazing produce that would blow your mind. My wife and I look forward to our annual road trip to Monterey partly because of the fruit stands we pass along the way where we'll get cherries so dark they're nearly black, and strawberries the size of my fist (no, really, I have pictures) that are sweet as sugar and incredibly delicio…

IME there is a large difference in quality in what is available at the super market. Sure I can do a once a year road trip to Monterey. The average organic heirloom tomato at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's is worse than the average organic heirloom tomato at Spar

I was buying the "flavor-bombs" cherry-tomatoes-type varieties, they were the most expensive at like $6-ish per lbs, and even these had less flavor than the average cheap tomato in my native country during summer :D

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

#409

Post by duskdozer »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #400
Jiro wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. The book was written during the Great Depression. We're not in the Great Depression now. Pretty much nobody nobody is dying of malnutrition in the US and nobody is dying of pellagra specifically, because we've invented fortifying food with vitamins. But the big difference is that the peach trees are being destroyed because nobody wants the peaches . That's the exact opposite of the quote, in which there…

> Pretty much nobody nobody is dying of malnutrition in the US Well, nobody important. US rates of malnutrition: https://worldmetrics.org/malnutrition-in-the-united-states-s... Increase in deaths from malnutrition: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/12/29/why-are-m... > To be sure, we wouldn’t yet call it commonplace. But while it accounts for fewer than 1 in 100 deaths, its toll is rising so fast that it’s…

Am I reading the charts correctly that 20% of under-54s have "marginal, low or very low food security" with it being over 30% of under-14s? If so, focusing only on deaths is missing a huge part of this.

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

#410

Post by djmips »

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.

the private equity buyout of Del Monte, that's got to be a big factor.
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