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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

#451

Post by [deleted] »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #380
musicale wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Somebody really good at the economy needs to explain to me how a PE firm buys a company using the company it’s buying as collateral for that financing, and then somehow, that acquired company is the entity that debt is attached to. Imagine if us poors could buy a Hummer EV financed against itself and then the truck had to self-drive for uber to pay its own payment, under penalty of being put in a crusher. Oh and you…

[deleted]

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

#452

Post by quickthrowman »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #315
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…

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

The lack of a crop next year is why they are receiving a subsidy. It’s to bridge the gap until they plant a new crop on that land.

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

#453

Post by quickthrowman »

rayiner wrote: post #216
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.

> Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.m There’s a large swath of America that has a deeply ingrained mentality of “food is for fuel, not enjoyment.” It’s a Protestant idea that entered the culture and became ingrained to the point where nobody remembers the origins but are still influenced by it. I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food…

> I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. I don’t think the food in Iowa used to be great “100 years ago before modern factory farming,” etc. I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need.

Iowa is a gigantic field corn, soybean, and pig farm with a few colleges, windmills, and one “city”. Commodity crops, not vegetables.

The one thing Iowa is known for is “loose meat sandwiches”, which is a Sloppy Joe with no tomato based sauce. Cuisine is not on the menu there ;)

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

#454

Post by p1necone »

quickthrowman wrote: post #450
p1necone wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you turn all them peaches into high proof alcohol they take up significantly less space...

There’s more than enough ethanol inputs already, corn.

Internal combustion engines may not have tastebuds, but I do.

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

#455

Post by tutorialmanager »

cogman10 wrote: post #163
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 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…

Peach trees last at most 15 years on commercial farms and are often replaced after only 10 years. The peak production years are from 5 to 10 years and I doubt any trees being cut down under this program are in that stage.

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

#456

Post by munk-a »

MisterMower wrote: post #383
munk-a wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I just have a strange personal definition of injustice - but the effort put into growing this orchard to destroy is could have gone to better projects. The fact that so much of an investment is being wasted is, to me, a misallocation of resources that were unjustly allotted to this failed venture. A more just outcome would have been these resources and efforts going to projects that actually yielded benefits…

The effort required to maintain the orchard when its fruit would go to waste would be even more destructive and wasteful, no? Which is really the greater injustice?

Yes - I absolutely endorse destroying the orchard at this point.

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

#457

Post by NetMageSCW »

recursive-call wrote: post #357
Legend2440 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It doesn’t have to be profitable, but someone has to pay for it. It’s only free on the trees unpicked.

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

#458

Post by robocat »

imtringued wrote: post #413
robocat wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder where consumer surplus fits into arguments about profit. Although in this particular situation clearly the consumer surplus wasn't enough to keep consumers buying Del Monte products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_surplus If we measure consumer surplus as a percentage, how would it compare to business profits as a percentage? Edit: Nobel laureate William Nordhaus studied the historical data of…

I'm not sure I understand your point? If you are private equity and do a leveraged buyout, the company is priced as if you could extract the current value of the company out of the acquisition. As if the company were a consumable basically, because that's how you're going to pay off the loan. If consuming the company requires mistreating customers (getting rid of consumer surplus), then that's what's going to happen.…

I'm trying to explore how we decide on root causes, and how many seem to want deserving victims to punish.

Is "those people who profited should pay for it" a desire to guillotine[1] those "executives walking away with millions".

Who profited? Do we blame the executives? Should we search for culprits of modern capitalist systems? How much is my fault or responsibility?

Sorry for the horrid quote - it was there to illustrate the question about consumer surplus - but it is too close to trolling.

> consuming the company requires mistreating customers (getting rid of consumer surplus)

I don't think you are using surplus meaningfully

Byrne Hobart[0] calls such acquisitions strip-mining of goodwill. Essentially extracting money from intangibles by destroying a brand. He uses brutally vivid metaphors, but with solid economics.

Yeah the Sveriges Riksbank prize seems ignoble.

[0] Byrne Hobart writes The Diff. Worthwhile subscribing to the free tier, although there is a lot of referencing to paid tier content. https://diff.substack.com/

[1] I've just read «A Tale of two cities» which uses the French revolution for English entertainment.

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

#459

Post by roncesvalles »

esperent wrote: post #395
peer2pay wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do canned peaches cause Alzheimer’s?

I'm gonna make a guess that it's the long debunked hypothesis that aluminum cookware and cans are linked to Alzheimers. As it turned out, aluminum poisoning can cause dementia-like symptoms, but you can't get aluminum poisoning from cookware or cans.

Many aluminum cans have residual aluminum shavings inside and outside. The manufacturing process isn't perfect.

I've personally noticed shavings multiple times on the lip (especially with cheaper non KO/PEP products). La Croix cans are notorious for this.

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

#460

Post by oa335 »

rayiner wrote: post #216
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.

> Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.m There’s a large swath of America that has a deeply ingrained mentality of “food is for fuel, not enjoyment.” It’s a Protestant idea that entered the culture and became ingrained to the point where nobody remembers the origins but are still influenced by it. I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food…

> I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. I don’t think the food in Iowa used to be great “100 years ago before modern factory farming,” etc. I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need.

I've observed the same thing; But my theory is taste in food is shaped by how recently a families lineage transitioned to processed foods and industrialized agricultural practices. e.g. I've observed a deterioration in taste in South Asia over the past 20 years, which I attribute to the same effect.

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