People underestimate how difficult it is to seek buyers for the amount of produce we are talking about here.<p>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.<p>Maybe, they can take some portion for local use. But the rest will spoil, and rest of the land will be effectively unused, and a burden. The best option is to cut that as much as possible, and plant something else that actually sells.<p>Of course, people who never approached agriculture will be appalled at this, and call it great injustice.
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).<p>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 repurposed to growing something that the market will absorb.<p>The reason the trees are being destroyed is so they can grow something else on the land. Something that comes with a sustainable business model for the current market demands. Yes, the trees are technically going to waste, but if we had forced the peaches to be grown and canned (as many comments are suggesting) then that would be a different kind of waste as they'd sit in warehouses while the land, resources, and labor were used to produce something people weren't buying instead of being used to produce foods they were buying.<p>In the article you can even see that the farm lobby was so powerful that they got the USDA to pay for the tree removal. 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.
> if we had forced the peaches to be grown and canned (as many comments are suggesting) then that would be a different kind of waste as they'd sit in warehouses while the land, resources, and labor were used to produce something people weren't buying instead of being used to produce foods they were buying.<p>Worse, the price would have to be lowered to bring up sales, which could put the other peach farmers into bankruptcy as well.
If you try to force production and sale hard enough, the sale price can even go negative.<p>If your warehouse is full of peaches nobody wants, you might be forced to sell them for negative dollars to take them away. It's either that, or you pay to have the waste management company dispose of them. So the price effectively goes negative from trying too hard to force something to happen.
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.<p>My fear is that institutional farming does not have the long term fortitude to ever start growing a tree bearing crop. Once these trees are destroyed, they are gone for good regardless how the demand shifts.<p>A downturn of 2 or 3 years or crazy political maneuvers which kill off exports puts access to these fruit in jeopardy. And once they are out of the diet, it's very hard to get them reintroduced. That's a big part of the reason why the US has such a limited fruit diet in the first place (the other being that many fruits are very hard to ship).
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.<p>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<p>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 translation for the following will be rough i realize).<p>On the "planting" side, you're wrong: a limited stock of "rootstock" (if this is the correct translation of "porte-greffe") is produced each year. As those are specific to a certain type of soil and take time to grow, you don't produce a ton each year. And vines "rootstock" are _a lot_ easier to grow than other trees (you have a mother-vine that you don't prune, you bury its branch in the soil, and over a year it will develop roots). My guess is that for orchards, your rootstock should take 3-4 years, so it isn't that easy.
Grape vines have a longer productive lifespan than most fruit trees so I don't know what point you're trying to make. Lots of wine grape vines are being torn out in California. Competition is intense, we're well past "peak wine" (consumers aren't drinking as much), and honestly a lot of it was kind of garbage anyway.
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.<p>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 investment.<p>If that were the case, then why are there so many peach trees currently? Why hasn't the entire orchard been replaced with olive trees?<p>Do you actually have farming experience?
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. Much ado about nothing.
Ok, then I'll just reissue my 2 questions<p>> If that were the case, then why are there so many peach trees currently? Why hasn't the entire orchard been replaced with olive trees?<p>I agree, that farmers forecast and switch up crops. But I disagree with you that you have a bunch of farmers that have mixed orchards setup because of that forecasting. It's not like wheat or barely where you could switch between the two even mid year if you were crazy enough.<p>I'd also point out that the first fruiting isn't exactly a bumper crop. It takes several more years after that first fruiting before you get to the point where a tree is fully productive.
You're not making any sense. I never claimed that a bunch of farmers have mixed orchards. Some farmers have too many peach trees right now because Del Monte got their forecasts wrong so now those farmers will chop down the peach trees and probably plant something else. Olive oil demand is still trending up so that might be a possibility in some cases, there are lots of options. That's just how farming works: you have to place your bets and then work for years to see if they pay off.
> I never claimed that a bunch of farmers have mixed orchards.<p>You claimed<p>> Every year farmers cut down a bunch of trees and plant new ones in response to costs and market demand.<p>What do you mean responding to "costs and market demand"?<p>You also claimed<p>> They forecast future trends as best they can and will replace trees (or other crops) when it seems profitable.<p>Both those statements would imply that you have orchard farmers who are growing and harvesting multiple types of crops. Unless you are trying to say that it's common for a fruit farmer to completely destroy an orchards and replace with with a new crop.<p>Both, frankly, are ridiculous claims which are quickly dispatched with "Why aren't there more olive trees".<p>If the reaction to market forces was that fast, the expectation is that last 10 years of raised olive prices would have caused a lot of these farmers to uproot and plant olive trees. It's currently a very lucrative crop and California is certainly amenable to growing olives.<p>> That's just how farming works: you have to place your bets and then work for years to see if they pay off.<p>I agree with this statement. Farming is a game of placing bets on the future of the market. But I disagree that orchard farmers are commonly just diving head first into switching crops in any sort of fashion. It takes a severe event, like their primary distributor going bankrupt, to move an orchard farmer towards new crops. That is not common or business as usual.
Did you not read the linked article? There are so many peach trees because the farmers were contracted to grow and sell the peaches to Del Monte.<p>New orchards of various crops are planted every day, I don't know why you think this doesn't happen in the modern age.
> Canned fruit, like what these farmers were producing, has been losing popularity for years. You can't force consumers to like it.<p>Has canned fruit actually lost popularity? Or did the <i>grocery stores</i> decide that the shelf space had a higher profit margin pushing something else?<p>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 to hit 3 different grocery stores).<p>I haven't tracked peaches recently, but I can tell you that canned apricots have been a bit thin on the ground for at least a couple of years.
If you don’t trust farmers to make the decision, who do you think should be making it?
TFA mentions 20-year contracts between Del Monte and farmers. That seems to have worked so well that we have too many peach trees. Like, to me the present situation itself should assuage your fears. Are you thinking another processor/distributor won’t come along in the future with long-term contracts? Where will they get their peaches?
> Are you thinking another processor/distributor won’t come along in the future with long-term contracts?<p>That's exactly what I'm thinking. There are few crops where someone might want to lock in a 20 year contract. It's a major gamble for all involved. It's a gamble for the distributor because tastes might shift in 20 years (almost certainly a big part of why Del Monte went bankrupt) and it's a risk for the farmer because it's not clear that another distributor will look at these farms and think "You know what, I can pick up where that company went bankrupt".<p>> Where will they get their peaches?<p>Will they get peaches? That's really the question. They might just decide it's too unpopular and the price would have to be too high to support selling peaches.<p>Del Monte was a big reason why peaches are available. Similar to how Dole is a big reason we have bananas year round. If Dole goes bankrupt, we likely won't see bananas on the shelves. And we know this because there's more than just 1 variety of banana in the world. We have access to only 1 because there's only one distributor of bananas in the US.<p>We are moving into an era of private equity doing fast turn around profits on everything. The old way of business thinking that you can have a 20 year contract is likely dying. 1 year contracts are going to be much more likely because that's where a lot of the investment is going. And Del Monte is the poster child for why a business would shy away from doing a 20 year contract.
> We have access to only 1 because there's only one distributor of bananas in the US.<p>Aren't there 3, at least? Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte?
The bananas I buy at Aldi are not Dole. Unless Dole sells under different brand names. But Dole is obviously the big player.
> 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<p>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.<p>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.<p>You can push up maturity by using a dwarf root stock and get to full fruiting in 6 to 8 years.
I don’t know about peaches but ‘round my way the cider apple farmers spank the living daylights out of their high density dwarf trees. They get grubbed up and replanted in under a decade. Fruit trees have a naturally short lifetime but mega yield modern species are something else — the arboreal equivalent of a 40 day broiler.<p>Ironically, there’s a century year old perry tree at the top of the valley.
> Del Monte went out of business because there wasn't enough demand for the peaches.<p>Maybe if grocery store peaches weren't a fibrous, tasteless representation of a real fresh peach, they'd still be in business.
Del Monte sells mostly canned peaches and those plastic snack packs so they’re picked a lot riper than fresh peaches at the grocery store.
The peaches have similar problem with fungal diseases like bananas. The best tastiest varieties can't be mass grown anymore.
I find good stone fruit to be very fragile, and hence the economics probably don't support their sale outside of the stone fruit's season and an acceptable radius to where they grow. Peaches/nectarines/plums are easily one of the worst returns on investment when I buy fruit, and this is within a days' drive to California and PNW.
> <i>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.</i><p>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 time, through bailouts (like this one) and regular subsidies.<p>Maybe that's a good use of tax dollars, maybe not. It feels bad, but I'm not an economist.<p>(And before anyone says that farmers are much more sympathetic characters than bankers, remember that "farmers" in the US overwhelmingly means gigantic corporate farming conglomerates; the individual family with a few hundreds or thousands of acres of land and hearts of gold is sadly increasingly uncommon.)
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.
Farmers switching from peaches to elsewise due to a lack of buyers represents a bailout?
The new crop will be grapes of wrath
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.<p>There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
Wow. That's <i>really</i> applicable, nearly a century later.
Wow. What a powerful text. Where is it from?
While SNAP is gutted
[flagged]
Great point, hoping whatever replaces them uses less water. Ag pulls ~40% of California's water and it feels like 3 out of every 4 years is a drought
> 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).<p>And a very low understanding of basic biology. A bunch of rotten fruit is _exceptionally valuable_ in many parts of the world. There's a million things you can do with it, alcohol, fertilizer...<p>edit: me right now I'm in a position where I could really use truckloads of rotten, inedible peaches if I could get them for free. Trying to figure out the most economic way to get a rather barren place some soil.
If rotten fruit was exceptionally valuable, then people would be paying exceptional amounts of money for it instead of wondering where they can get truckloads of it for free.
> <i>A bunch of rotten fruit is _exceptionally valuable_</i><p>> <i>right now I'm in a position where I could really use truckloads of rotten, inedible peaches if I could get them for free.</i><p>These two statements contradict each other. If you are pushing to get something for free (and seems like you wouldn't pay for them, or wouldn't pay much for them, instead opting to do without), then they are absolutely not exceptionally valuable from the sell side.
Someone needs to put them in tanks for long time and make something very valuable like this:<p><a href="https://en.excaliburshop.com/catalog/item/8951/fleret-merunkovice-18y-0-5l-50/" rel="nofollow">https://en.excaliburshop.com/catalog/item/8951/fleret-merunk...</a>
[dead]
One time, I was driving on a highway, and every now and then I'd see a tomato on the side of the road. At first it was one every couple minutes, but as I passed more vehicles the rate increased. 10 per minute. 30 per minute. Then, hundreds. Every mile, I passed more tomatoes than my household would eat in a year (and it's probably a household that eats an above average amount of tomatoes).<p>This went on for about an hour, but finally, I made my way up to the truck that was carrying the tomatoes. They were pouring out of the open top. Other vehicles kept their distance in the right lane so as not to be pelted with tomatoes. But the thing was is that the truck was <i>still full</i>. And the road was isolated, so it must have been driving along like this for several hours. All those tomatoes we passed on the road - decades worth for a single family - just an irrelevant minor leak. It wasn't even a leak, someone just filled the truck a tiny, probably imperceptibly small bit too much.<p>If one truck carries that much food, and then there's however many other tomato trucks each day, then that's a <i>lot</i>.
Farming history seems to be boom and bust and the golden ages of farming seem to be not quite what they were and surprisingly short.<p>A local university professor did a study on homesteading in my state and determined that even then the land offered to immigrants was actually to small to regularly turn a profit, to some extent that seems to continue to this day at times.
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.
As someone close to agriculture this is the only true response in this thread and anyone understand fruit business knows this.
> Maybe, they can take some portion for local use. But the rest will spoil, and rest of the land will be effectively unused, and a burden. The best option is to cut that as much as possible, and plant something else that actually sells.<p>A negative of the subsidy is that the farmland is not going to hit the market at a much lower rate. That raises the bar for entry into farming or at least keeps the bar at some level higher than the market would have had it.
Although you have a point regarding this specific situation; the real, bigger issue is this industrial scale, low quality, high quantity food production system.
Reminds me of stories about McDonalds introducing new menu items. The logistics of introducing things at all their locations is a major concern. Maybe they could have introduced a new peach desert or something, but like you said supply isn't the only thing - you need to move them around and process them too.
Peaches are from the great country of China. Very popular and important in culture. Export may be the best solution. However, cultivar matters, and it may be too late in this case.
> Of course, people who never approached agriculture will be appalled at this, and call it great injustice.<p>Uneducated rice farmers in Bangladesh would understand the problem better than the people complaining about this.
I agree that the tree destruction is a perfectly rationale reaction - but it is still an injustice. This quantity of waste is not free and not fully priced into the cost to produce the fruit.<p>I think the emotional misalignment most people will feel at this announcement is a signal that there's a large missed externality that allowed margins on this produce to get too thin.
A big part of the problem here is that Del Monte was the victim of several leveraged buyouts that had executives walking away with millions while the company was saddled with debt.
They will be replaced with something else, don't feel bad for the trees, they had a good run.
It’s an injustice to destroy orchards of commercially planted fruit trees that were bathed in pesticides for their entire life? I’m not seeing the injustice here, something else will be planted in place of the peach trees. It’s productive agricultural land.
I don't know what you mean by 'injustice' - it seems to be a proxy for 'I don't like it when trees die'. Is there more?
Actually, for me, I primarily dislike needless waste. A bunch of resources were dedicated to growing this orchard which will all go to naught. It's better to destroy the orchard than sink even more effort into it if it'll be wasted in the end but the lack of forethought and planning is concerning.<p>It's a bit awkwardly worded but unjust isn't the word I'd specifically choose, it was inherited from the OP so maybe their view of what "injustice" meant was different and I just hijacked it. Dunno. I interpreted is as an unjust allocation of resources that could have been put to more productive uses.
The waste would have been continuing to use large amounts of water to grow a crop with declining popularity.
They are going to naught now, so that the resources (land) can be better used. The trees were productive during their life.
>but the lack of forethought and planning is concerning.<p>How did you determine this? Do you expect every single venture with forethought and planning to "succeed" (however you define that)?<p>Is it not prudent to assume that when the farmers made the decision to plant those trees, they did so with the best available information and "forethought" they had?
By that logic, all "injustice" is "I don't like it when X happens" - there is nothing more.
What is unjust about cutting down an orchard producing a product people aren't buying?<p>This isn't pristine old growth forest, it has no great ecology.
Then why do they use so much land in the first place?
Seems like an opportunity to form a coop. I guess I’m being naive though. I just don’t know how
[dead]
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.<p>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 destruction of crop.<p>Have a banner year of peach sales in California for super cheap... market corrects for its past mistakes.
I mean, we already have one company going bankrupt in part because they are unable to sell enough of their production to cover costs. Your plan would just cause more peach producers to go bankrupt.
>Have a banner year of peach sales in California for super cheap... market corrects for its past mistakes.<p>Bankrupt everyone who grows peaches then?<p>There are actual costs in growing, harvesting, and delivering produce to market you know.
the difficulty of bringing produce to market is reflected in the cost structure. 90% of a food dollar goes towards all the efforts required to get food to the customer (transportation, packaging, warehousing, marketing, retail, etc).<p>this is why I think the solution is to have people grow their own fruits in their own backyards and front yards. customers will save a huge amount of money and it's better for the environment too.
You're assuming that the customer growing their own fruit could do it at lower overall cost. Logistics are fairly inexpensive all things considered, if they really represent 90% of the total cost of fruit it says a lot for how low agribusiness has driven down the cost of the other 10%.
I think for some types of produce, a home garden is an easy win when it comes to cost. Sure there are things that are very difficult (labor intensive, water intensive, etc.) to grow, so avoid those. But tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, beans, potatoes, peas, and beans are pretty easy to grow, and seed stock can be purchased cheaply. I haven't done this as an adult because I am so excessively lazy (but it's on my to-do list for this year, finally), but we had a vegetable garden when we were kids, and between my mom, my sister, and I, it was very manageable, and we ended up growing more than we could use, and gave some away to neighbors.
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.<p>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.
Local deer everywhere agree: this is the solution
No one is stopping customers from growing their own food. What's stopping is the lack of expertise knowledge and time commitments it takes to harvest.
Not really. I buy bare-root tree from home depot, throw it into the ground, and get fruit in a few years. No fertilizer, no anything, just give it water and sun. It's not rocket science.
It's definitely science, and it definitely doesn't work that way for most people. Also, "a few years" is a long time between deciding you want fruit and getting to eat it.
> <i>Also, "a few years" is a long time between deciding you want fruit and getting to eat it.</i><p>The best time to plant was a few years ago, the next-best time to plant is today.<p>This feels like a weird argument; you can decide you want to grow your own fruit today, plant that tree, and continue to buy fruit for the next few years until it's ready. This isn't rocket science. For most people it's not particularly likely that they're going to decide in the next few years that they don't like apples or lemons or whatever anymore.<p>Your lack of desire to either plan ahead or be patient doesn't invalidate the approach.
Not just deer, but a number of insects will thank you for your generosity. And you will have to learn when and how to fight them in order to get a decent harvest.
Firstly, half the produce we buy does not grow well in our climate.
Secondofly, my parents both grew up on farms and have gardened most of their lives. They struggle to get a good yield between growing conditions, adjusting irrigation, and keeping the birds, hogs, deer, raccoons away.
> and call it great injustice.<p>The great injustice is very much me paying however much per pound of peaches when the supply is so great that they should be much cheaper.<p>However, if these are the trees that grow rock hard peaches that never soften as they ripen with no flavor, then bulldoze them all and say good riddance. Hell, might as well take of and nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
> The great injustice is very much me paying however much per pound of peaches when the supply is so great that they should be much cheaper.<p>But its not, because the supply and competing demands for motor fuel and all the other things that are required between the orchard are involved, not just the supply of peaches at the orchard.
You want BC Okanagan peaches. I've found them to be dramatically better than anything that's come out of the states for some reason. Granted, most of those would probably be coming from the western half of the country
There's a floor on what they can charge, though: the cost of maintaining the land, the cost of labor to harvest, the cost to process the peaches and package them, the cost to ship them to the store, and the store's cost to hold them in inventory before you buy them.<p>A business cannot stay in operation if the only way to sell the product is to sell it below cost[0]. Having all this excess production is exactly why Del Monte failed as a company. There's no point in building a business to provide people with below-cost food; it's not sustainable and is ultimately wasteful.<p>Find a way to get the peaches from the trees to people's homes cheaper? Great, do that, and maybe you can sell more at a lower price.<p>Or produce fewer until you can sell at a price above cost without much waste. We don't wring our hands at factory owners when they don't manufacture a huge surplus of toys that no one wants to buy. We shouldn't be upset when farmers decide to stop growing as much of a certain crop because they can't sell it all. I get the visceral reaction against killing trees. But that's an emotional response that has nothing to do with the reality of the situation. I would much rather that land be used for a more productive crop that people actually want to buy, at prices that reflect what it costs to produce.<p>[0] Cue VC-funded startup jokes.
>However, if these are the trees that grow rock hard peaches that never soften as they ripen with no flavor, t<p>That's not even how trees work. If they wanted, those same trees could grow plums within 2 years, or almonds, or pretty much any stonefruit except cherries (which tend to be incompatible).
Yes, trees are magical, but there are better peaches to grow of these are the ones being grown
Then please explain to me how trees work.
Grafting is how nearly 100% of many fruit varieties are grown.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting</a>
<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=tree+grafting" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=tree+grafting</a>
I think they're fusing different fruit tree cuttings to a common trunk.
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.
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 delicious.<p>The existence of Subway doesn't mean you can't get phenomenal deli sandwiches. It does mean you probably need to look around a little more and don't settle for the first sandwich place you see.<p>Edit: This is my wife holding one of those strawberries. We took that picture from the sheer absurdity of it. The pack of berries hardly survived the rest of the drive. We'd eaten almost all of them by the time we arrived at the B&B. <a href="https://share.icloud.com/photos/0ebgyxOMT9LpyjhfKuLQWD0kw" rel="nofollow">https://share.icloud.com/photos/0ebgyxOMT9LpyjhfKuLQWD0kw</a>
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
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).<p>That’s not to say that we can’t get amazing fruit in Massachusetts, but the selection is quite different. Apples, blueberries, raspberries, and cranberries are all fantastic. Oranges, peaches, sweet cherries, avocados, and many other things are mediocre at best. Getting great in-season fruit and produce is the primary reason why I now have a very large garden, but I need to temper my expectations even for some of the things I grow. Outside of a farmer’s market, this is the ONLY way to get a decent tomato in Massachusetts.
Maybe so, but I’d still think it’s more convenient to occasionally visit a local farmers market than to move to another continent.
> strawberries the size of my fist<p>No thanks. The most wonderful strawberries I ever tasted were wild ones picked on a disused Welsh railway line, probably a centimetre or so in size.
No doubt they were delicious - fruit picked while walking is always special.<p>But here in California, we have tremendous strawberries in our markets: Camarosa, Albion, Gaviota. Each is different in size, texture, flavor-profile.<p>I usually buy a "flat" of strawberries from the local farmer's market during peak season every weekend. They go in my oatmeal, my smoothies and in my lunches.<p>E.g:
<a href="https://www.ocregister.com/2024/07/13/farmers-market-pops-up-sundays-in-north-laguna-hills/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ocregister.com/2024/07/13/farmers-market-pops-up...</a>
Not sure why you’re downvoted. The bigger the fruit the less sugars / nutrition it has per gram. A big reason why wild strawberries are so tasty is because theyre so small. I’ve had the fortune to forage for wild mountain strawberries in my native country in the balkans and their taste is nothing comparable to the farmed ones. Its like two different fruits. Once you try wild strawberries you will remember that experience forever
Subway (and McDonald's et al.) did run a bunch of local diners, restaurants, and cafeterias out of business, though. The ones that sold the middle ground between "optimized slop" and "bespoke actual food made by expensive chefs."
Strawberries are not the size of fists. Ever wonder what they put in those?
Perhaps you haven't had the pleasure of eating fresh-picked strawberries from Watsonville on your drive down PCH 1. Strawberries that are shipped across the US (Watsonville produces something like 40%) are picked under-ripe and will not sweeten more along the way.<p>Ripe, Watsonville farm-stand strawberries are something else entirely. They can indeed be fist sized. I encourage you to try them yourself.<p>Alternatively, you can go to pick your own places along the way - also fantastic.
I've had a similar experience when shopping at a gas station store that bought produce from a local strawberry patch. Unfortunately, it was on a road trip.
They are in Japan.
There used to be an amazing upick organic strawberry farm just past La Selva. I saw exactly what they put in them. Eating huge strawberries perfectly ripe, picked a half hour ago from there was incredible.
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.<p>Bay area produce is unparalleled - Tomatoes, peaches, figs, strawberries, etc.<p>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 to know where to look.
That's funny specifically about peaches that you call out Georgia. Also, I am in Texas, and some of the best peaches I've had are from East Texas. Not really sure why you picked those two states. Sounds like you haven't been to either and are way out over your skis here.
I live in NorCal and agree with you that we have great produce, but it's a little weird to single out Texas and Georgia (the latter especially on an article about peaches!). There's plenty of good produce to be had in both of those places, though I'm sure quality varies across a state as large as Texas (just like it does in California to some extent).
I visited California a month ago and had some of the best strawberries I've ever had for $4/quart off the side of the road near Bakersfield (best I had was Oshii berries before they started to sell to grocers, but that was at luxury fruit prices).<p>The Sunnyvale farmers market was a different story though. Two of the vendors gave out samples. One of them tasted like Safeway strawberries. The other gave out these small strawberries that were really sweet, and this vendor had a lot more business even though their berries were $1 more expensive. However, the ones that the vendor actually sold were much bigger than the sample strawberries. I was suspicious, but bought them anyways. Sure enough, when I tried them, they tasted like Safeway strawberries. My takeaway from this experience is that America sells bad produce less so due to supply reasons and more so that Americans just have poor taste in produce.
It’s bit like complaining that they had plenty of skiing opportunities in Switzerland, but when they moved to Florida there weren’t any.
California maybe has best produce in the US, but far from the best produce on the planet. Not sure how you came to this conclusion. The Mediterranean region is uncontested #1. The cuisines of the mediterranean are so good because the produce we had here was so good, not the other way around.
I've stopped buying peaches from the supermarkets. They just are not worth it. To get peaches with actual flavor, I have to get them from special vendors that know they have better peaches and charge accordingly.<p>The suppliers don't notice when the numbers that stop are rounding errors. The vast majority of people don't have any experience with anything other than supermarket produce and don't know there's a choice. Growing up as a kid, I didn't know there were so many varieties of apples. Our store only carried red delicious, golden, and granny smith. It wasn't until I moved out of the sticks and saw more varieties. Some people never move, so they only know what they know and never experience new
Same with Maui Gold pineapples. I can't eat the Dole crap you get everywhere else. The ones at the markets in Maui are a completely different fruit, they're like candy. Whenever I go I eat them until my tongue burns from the citric acid.<p>This is what happens when you optimize your food supply for profit instead of being edible; varieties are selected for yield, longevity and shipping rather than flavor or nutrients. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
Not sure that's citric acid doing that, it's probably bromelain, which can be used as a meat tenderizer: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromelain" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromelain</a>
> Whenever I go I eat them until my tongue burns from the citric acid.<p>Been to Maui once, and this was pretty much my exact experience as well. Thought I was the only weird one to do that. I only slowed down though until it got really bad before stopping. Wish I was smarter to stop earlier ::face-palm::
My understanding is that it's all bred to be easier and faster to grow. Flavour isn't first in the value equation.
And longer shelf life. And flavor isn't in the top 10
Yes. Flavour isnt the main factor, its easier and faster growing, not spoiling, basically all the factors that are what a supermarket asks for. Here in southern europe flavor is the main concern. The flavorless produce doesnt fly here because nobody would buy that crap. We have standards. When I was living in the US I was shopping in wholefoods only and buying the most expensive varieties of the produce, and it still sucked xD
> Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.m<p>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.<p>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.<p>And I don’t think it’s just “U.S. consumerism blah blah” either. The Anglo food in Canada and the UK sucks too. They just don’t care.
You are comparing fruit in a prime stone fruit-growing region to the US.<p>The US is big and fruit needs to be refrigerated to be transported. Refrigeration kills aromatics.<p>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.<p>> stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice<p>Unless you are willing to pay $30/peach for them to be flown next day on a jet, peaches in New York are not going to taste as good as they do off the tree.
> <i>Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.</i><p>How would most Americans know there's a difference? A large plurality will never leave the country in their lifetime, and many won't even leave the area where they grew up in.<p>Even for those who travel to some extent, eating as a tourist will rarely give you the experience of going to a grocery store, buying fresh produce, and eating it.<p>And even if a tourist ends up with some really amazing produce in another country, they'll likely chalk it up to a lucky, isolated incident, and not think much of it. Or it's just the "everything is better when you're on vacation" phenomenon. They'll go back home and be back to eating what they're used to.<p>To be fair, though, there <i>is</i> plenty of wonderful, flavorful produce in the US. There are a few problems, though:<p>1. Some areas in the US truly are underserved and have bad produce. And by "areas" that can even mean small pockets here and there, where you may only have to drive an extra 20 minutes to get good produce, but it doesn't even occur to you to try, because you assume it will be the same.<p>2. In the US we seem to believe that we should be able to get every single kind of produce year-round, regardless of what's in season. So you might see something on the shelves all year, but it's only actually really good for a month or three. The experience during the rest of the year will tend to dominate your opinion.<p>3. You're more likely to get better quality at a more expensive, boutique-like grocer, or at a farmer's market. Most Americans just don't shop at places like those when there's a cheaper, large chain grocery store available. Farmer's markets can be especially difficult when they're only open a day or two per week, and busy people/families need more flexibility.<p>For reference, I live in northern California, and there's plenty of fantastic produce here. Yes, when I go to something like Safeway (part of a huge grocery chain), I don't expect anything terribly amazing. It's fine, but nothing special. But I have a small local grocery a couple blocks away from me that usually has great produce (though sometimes it can be hit-or-miss with some items), and they also make an effort to stock many items based on growing season. I've been to various places in Europe many times, and have even been to grocery stores and bought produce so we could cook dinners in an Airbnb. I've generally had a good experience with the produce there, but I wouldn't say it's notably better than where I live in the US.
Exactly. I can see a lot of US apple juice bottles that contain a liquid resembling piss.<p>It's disgusting.<p>Real apple juice is dark brown and tastes nothing like the golden liquid mentioned above.
They sell "real" apple juice in the US. It's just called apple cider and you can find it at any supermarket.<p>"Apple cider is raw, unfiltered, and often unpasteurized apple juice, resulting in a cloudy, dark appearance and rich, tart flavor. Apple juice is filtered to remove pulp, pasteurized for a longer shelf life, and often sweeter. Cider is usually seasonal and refrigerated, whereas juice is shelf-stable"<p>Europeans consistently visit a gas station and conclude this must be all there is to eat in America.
It's hard to vote with your dollar when market economics are such that only a handful of (massive) firms sell almost all of thing you're protesting. What leverage does one have in the age of oligopolistic enshittification?
It's difficult for them because farmers are raised anti-union individualists that are at the mercy of middle-men. If they would cooperate, unionize even, they would be far more powerful than they are now.
US farmers are up there in terms of how much business protection exists for them. I do think there were policy issues and recent political extremism has diverted a lot of their political will from the matters that are critical to them - but this sort of an issue is larger than just collectivizing. Agriculture is a global market that is uncoordinateable (at least without massive effort) and so if local protections are to be offered the costs will need to be artificially introduced through domestic price increases that the larger American market finds extremely unpalatable.<p>This is a failing where a lack of coordinated collectivized action was one contributing factor but there is actually a large collectivized will here - but I think the bigger issue is that it's having difficulty aligning itself in the current political environment.
I'm sorry, but this is completely wrong. California canning peach farmers are organized and crop prices are set by industry-wide bargaining with processors every year. Additionally, now that Del Monte is out of the business, the only remaining operating canneries are owned by a grower cooperative. It didn't save the industry. In fact, it may have led to the irrational planting of these trees that now need to be pulled. Source: my father was a peach farmer and chairman of the board of the California Canning Peach Association for many years. But he saw this coming and got out of the business.
I’m an agronomist and while I don’t directly deal with that level of things, what you wrote sounds roughly like what goes on for the hazelnut industry here in Oregon.<p><a href="https://www.hazelnutbargaining.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.hazelnutbargaining.com/</a>
He saw demand falling or what? What did he swap to?
He saw demand falling, exports falling due to the strong dollar and increased productivity in international farming, mismanagement at the canneries with executives cashing out using leveraged buyouts and saddling the companies with unsustainable debt, and trouble finding enough labor (peaches are harvested by hand, almost entirely by migrant workers from Mexico because no native Californian is willing to climb up and down ladders all day in 110 degree heat and 100% humidity, and it's hard to ensure legality).<p>He switched to almonds and walnuts, which are less labor intensive and have better management on the processing side. But they are an export-heavy market and have also been hammered by the strong dollar. Inflation-adjusted crop prices are near all time lows while costs are at all-time highs. Farming is a hard business!
Farmers generally own or lease their land. How and why would the owner or leaseholder of the land unionize? Who would they be negotiating with collectively? On the other hand, many farmers are parts of pools that pool their crops and sell them all into commodities markets.<p>I don’t think you have a clue what you’re talking about. And it’s a shame; unions actually deserve better representation than you just provided.
In a less profit driven world, we might stockpile these in cans and then later throw them away once they spoil, taking over the canning facilities and paying for the wages via taxes on things not needed for survival. We don't maximize food security though, we prefer profit, up to and including choosing not to feed people.
That's how we got mountain bunkers filled with cheese over the course of decades.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvLMH0wb_0k" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvLMH0wb_0k</a>
And how we ended up feeding roughly a third of US-grown corn to cars.
Of course if they did then what's about to happen with the peach trees, you'd end up killing the dairy cows, which I'm guessing the people in this thread would have a problem with.
Farmers are literally subsidized to over-produce for food security.
Which of course is not enough due to other expenses:<p><a href="https://www.fb.org/market-intel/farm-bankruptcies-continued-to-climb-in-2025" rel="nofollow">https://www.fb.org/market-intel/farm-bankruptcies-continued-...</a><p><a href="https://www.adamsandreese.com/the-ledger/rising-farm-distress-preparing-for-increased-agriculture-bankruptcies-in-2026-2027" rel="nofollow">https://www.adamsandreese.com/the-ledger/rising-farm-distres...</a><p>And those farms get bought up and folded into for-profit operations. You simply can't fix this in the current system.
> <i>for food security</i><p>They overproduce for votes. Countries without farmer blocks swinging elections stockpile non-perishables for food security.
Uh yeah, this was Del Monte’s business model.<p>The issue is that the company that owns the canning plants (Del Monte) went bankrupt. There is no canning capacity available to do this.<p>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).
What makes you think the government is remotely qualified to run a canning operation, a logistics operation, a warehousing operation, an HR operation, and a finance operation for peaches?<p>Also which government? Because there are at least 3-5 relevant ones here, maybe more.
>What makes you think the government is remotely qualified to run a canning operation, a logistics operation, a warehousing operation, an HR operation, and a finance operation for peaches?<p>That'd actually be quite easy for this particular federal government actually (current administration aside). And probably California too.
> <i>What makes you think the government is remotely qualified to run a canning operation, a logistics operation, a warehousing operation, an HR operation, and a finance operation for peaches?</i><p>The DoD (for one) runs lots of logistics, warehousing, HR (2.8M), and finance stuff.
The government is able to do all of this for an entire literal army of people, spread across the entire world. And for an additional smaller army we call the Marines. Only difference is we add peaches on top of the canning of lead.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_City_Army_Ammunition_Plant" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_City_Army_Ammunition_Plan...</a>
I'm not saying this is a good idea, but the government doesn't need to know how to micromanage these operations. The company already has employees who can do these things. All they need is to get paid. If the government decided that the final harvest of peaches needed to be canned, they could take over the business and pay to make it happen.<p>edit: Actually, they don't even need to take over the business. Another company is already operating it. The government could simply sign a contract to buy the 50,000 tons of canned peaches and the company would can them. Again, not to endorse the idea, but it is very straightforward logistically.
When governments take over food production the people starve.
Do you really want a world without any fast food or snack foods? I mean, I think we consume way too much as a society, but I'd rather not have the government decide what I'm allowed to eat.<p>Have a conversation with someone who grew up in communist USSR/Russia sometime... It definitely isn't cool.<p>If we had govt controlled food supply, we'd never have the likes of hot sauce (sriracha, pace, etc) and would likely never have seen a lot of options form. For better and far, far worse.
>but I'd rather not have the government decide what I'm allowed to eat.<p>I don't know how it'd get to that if we had even more supply. I'm saying we'd be better off dealing with the problems of overproduction rather than the problems of unprofitable businesses and killing production capacity because it isn't profitable in the short-term.<p>I also never said you couldn't have non/not-for-profit food production, just that they shouldn't be for-profit.
It's difficult because a lot of the margins have been pressed out, and capital funding is often done in a way that doesn't allow for a market to shrink and respond to over-production or a reduction in demand.<p>If the government was responsible for running the farms, we would not have near the variety we have today... and for that matter, it would be much closer to soviet communism. I'm absolutely opposed to that.<p>And how do you know we would be better off? What would you do with oversupply? We had mountains full of cheese for decades from oversupply.. and that's a single product. Canned fruit doesn't even last that long before breaking down. The alternative is waste year after year, vs. cutting back and planting something else, which is what is happening... part of the market was allowed to fail (Del Monte) and part is being bailed out (farms) in defense of being able to have ongoing production, even if the product is different.<p>That seems far better than having mountains full of rotten peaches in cans.
Uh, didn't they have "Southern sauce" for lack of a better translation?
As I understand it, Del Monte made a few mistakes.<p>The first was related to COVID. Sales of canned goods spiked during COVID. They misinterpreted this as a permanent change and invested accordingly.<p>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.<p>Finally, they didn't address changes in diet that (as I see it) makes sugary syrupy tree candy not something people want to eat. Carbs are recognized now as seriously unhealthy. Ozempic and related drugs may have also affected this.
Clingstone peaches are best used for canning and this is one of the last canneries shutting down. The remaining CA cannery is buying what it can. This helps them remove now worthless trees and plant new crops. But it will take a generation to recover.
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.<p>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.
> they'd grow diversified crops to sell locally<p>This is out of touch, many of these farmers are 100+ miles from a large population center. They can’t move enough produce at a local store to stay in business.
Maybe, but it's not an argument against diversification. When it comes to agriculture, the incentives should be aligned such that a single point of failure like this is highly unlikely.<p>That's not to say it's an easy problem to solve.
> That's not to say it's an easy problem to solve.<p>Incorrect. You simply decide that having less than 5 suppliers at any level is unacceptable and you <i>bust companies up, repeatedly</i> until you have those suppliers. That way when one goes bankrupt, you don't wind up with complete supply chain disintegration.<p>The solution is <i>quite straightforward</i>. However, it requires an electorate that has a couple of brain cells to rub together in order to understand the solution. And 30% of the US is willfully hostile to any real solutions while another 30% is happy to fiddle while everything burns.
> 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.<p>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<p>It’s also hard to implement. What counts as a supplier? Is Google the sole supplier for search functionality? If 4 suppliers provide 1% of demand, and one supplies 96%, does that comply? If there’s only one company offering some new service (e.g. driverless cars), do they immediately get broken up?
And conversely you can't grow enough food local to a large population center to feed everyone.
> 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.<p>What if they can't make much money doing so?
> It was an easy, steady cash-positive business until it wasn't.<p>This is out of touch. Growing fruit is one of the most difficult tasks in farming.
Farmers care about making money.
This is your fault for eating fewer canned peaches. The clingstone variety is bred for canning and not well suited to eating fresh.
Some local meat smoker is going to be very happy about all that peach wood. holy smokes!
There's a good chance of that, yes! Farmers tend to be very good at getting every bit of value out of things. I live in the Sierras, uphill from many of these peach trees. Near the peach trees are lots and lots of almond trees. Almond trees are rotated (removed and replaced with young trees) every couple of decades or so, so 3-5% are taken out every year.<p>A lot of the removed almond tree wood is sold to people like me up in the Sierras where we heat with it in the winter. Almond has significantly more energy per unit of volume that most other species of trees in our area. I don't like the smell of burning almond wood. I bet peach wood smells a lot better, but it would take a lot more space to store the same energy.
This is rapidly changing. As almond orchards get taken over by corporate farmers instead of smaller family farmers, they just chip the almond wood and discard it instead of dealing with waiting for various people to come in and get the almond wood.<p>(Source: my relatives in the Sac. Valley don’t heat with almond wood anymore.)
That's going to make for some very interesting smoked cheeses. I'd love to try a smoked brie with this wood.
If you are in agriculture you understand how expensive to move things, as crazy as this sounds it’s practically only option many times.<p>Easy way to understand, they can announce it’s free come and get it and it wouldn’t have moved. Which clearly shows financially moving these don’t make sense.
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?
> <i>What's missing in this analysis?</i><p>Tree maintenance labor, harvest labor, storage before shipping, labor to load the truck, labor to unload the truck, supermarket storage, supermarket shelf-stocking labor, supermarket disposal labor and cost for any stock that spoils.<p>That's for peaches intended to eat whole. The peaches we're talking about here are intended for canning, so you also have to add the cost of running the processing and canning machinery, the cost of the cans themselves, and the cost of labor to run and coordinate all that.<p>Also consider that no single supermarket is going to buy out the entire truck, so you're going to be stopping at many supermarkets, and unloading multiple times.<p>For larger chain supermarkets they may be buying a full truck (or multiple), but then you'll probably be delivering to a distribution center, where the supermarket then has to pay for that storage, plus labor to re-load onto other trucks, ship to the supermarkets themselves, and unload again.<p>Your analysis is missing nearly <i>everything</i>. Driving the full truck from point A to point B is a tiny part of the process, cost-wise. And I'm sure I've left things out too.
What‘s missing is considering why, if it were so easy, nobody has done that before they went out of business.
There are a number of costs and steps you forgot to consider. Plus, these peaches are for canning, but we’ll ignore that and assume they could be sold for eating raw.<p>The fruit needs to be picked. Paying people to pick it costs money.<p>As far as I know, you can’t just load 44 tons of peaches into a grain hopper trailer. It has to be loaded into crates, which are stacked and palletized and loaded into a refrigerated trailer. Possibly this is automated, but I’d bet it’s done by humans.<p>Food is generally not delivered from a farm directly to a grocery store, (ignore local co-ops buying from local farms for the purpose of this discussion, we have 44 tons of peaches inside our 53 foot trailer) fruit is stored in a refrigerated warehouse and it costs money to store it there whether you own the warehouse or pay someone else to store it in their warehouse.<p>A grocery chain will have (or rent/rent space in) warehouses where they receive large orders and then distribute them to individual stores, or they buy it from a local distributor that sells to multiple chains. Include unloading from the truck to the warehouse, which is faster than loading the fruit onto pallets, and picking the order in the warehouse to then be loaded onto another truck to be delivered.<p>Then, someone at the store has to receive the order, and then someone is assigned to stock the fruit on the sales floor, which occupies space inside the store which costs money.<p>All of your freight costs go up if you ship less than a full trailer (LTL).
Are there a lot of extra trucks and refrigerated trailers sitting around idle?
Reality is missing from that LLM analysis.
Yeah I got nerd sniped and did actual math... 45k lbs peaches, $2/mile operating cost gets you there at $55/ton. However that's just the truck/driver hire, that does not cover loading/unloading costs or storage logistics. Those are dock to dock prices, no supermarket is buying 22 tons of peaches so you're either driving the semi around to many supermarkets ($$$) or delivering to a central distributer who is brokering sales and last-miling smaller deliveries locally, in which case congrats you've just reinvented existing food distribution.
I know this is naive but I wonder why the CCPA, together with the Department of Agriculture, chose not to purchase the peach canning facilities that Del Monte Foods was running. I suppose that it's more risk for the farmers in a world where canned peach sales are declining. I can't imagine it's easy to just clear cut a ton of trees though. 9 million sounds like nothing when it will take years for whatever new crop they plant to fruit.
glad we piped all of that water off the Colorado river to them
What are the likely crops that would replace these? Is there chance for Agrivoltaics or straight up Solar being the most profitable opportunity?
So weird to have so many peach experts here, but I think it’s peachy.
This is all because :peach: now only means "buttocks" or "impeachment" isn't it? Who'd want to eat those anymore!<p><a href="https://emojipedia.org/peach" rel="nofollow">https://emojipedia.org/peach</a>
While SFGate probably isn't renowned for its agricultural coverage, it'd be nice if there was at least a little context in their story. Is the demand for canned peaches dropping, or is production from other regions or countries displacing the California production, or what? What new crops might the farmers replace the trees with? Are there Peach Festivals or other local cultural events which will be impacted?
Del Monte was killed by COVID. Canned food sales spiked and they thought that would last, but it didn't.<p>The specific peaches referred to in this story are "Cling peaches", which can only be canned, they aren't sold fresh. But modern supply chains mean fresh peaches of other varieties are easily available, which has reduced the demand for canned.<p>They'll probably replace the trees with almonds, pistachios, and walnuts.
Death by many cuts:<p><i>"Consumer preferences have shifted away from preservative-laden canned food in favor of healthier alternatives," said Sarah Foss, global head of legal and restructuring at Debtwire, a financial consultancy.<p>Grocery inflation also caused consumers to seek out cheaper store brands. And President Donald Trump's 50% tariff on imported steel, which went into effect in June, will also push up the prices Del Monte and others must pay for cans.<p>Del Monte Foods, which is owned by Singapore's Del Monte Pacific, was also hit with a lawsuit last year by a group of lenders that objected to the company's debt restructuring plan. The case was settled in May with a loan that increased Del Monte's interest expenses by $4 million annually, according to a company statement.</i><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/del-monte-files-for-bankruptcy-as-its-canned-fruit-and-vegetable-sales-slide" rel="nofollow">https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/del-monte-files-for-bank...</a><p><i>During the coronavirus pandemic, when more people were eating at home, demand rose to record highs, Del Monte said in the filing, and the company committed to higher production levels. Once demand began to ease, Del Monte was left with too much inventory that it was forced to store, write off and “sell at substantial losses.”<p>The company also said it had carried a large amount of debt since it was acquired in 2014 by Del Monte Pacific Limited, which borrowed to finance the acquisition. Interest rates continued to increase, and the company’s annual cash interest expense has nearly doubled since 2020.</i><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/business/del-monte-bankruptcy.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/business/del-monte-bankru...</a><p>If you're up for a 12 minute video, another issue is a long history of changing ownership. The video also really underscores how weighed down by debt the company has been:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=879CJsz8X6A" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=879CJsz8X6A</a>
Frozen peaches are superior
The Man from Del Monte said No?
> When a processing facility closes and 55,000 acres of fruit suddenly have nowhere to go — that’s not something a family farm can just absorb<p>Won't they at least sell the fruit to customers through grocery stores, where possible? I can see replacing the crops based on reduced future demand from the canneries, but surely the current fruit is usable.
From what I understand it is a canning variety of peach that isn't all that great for eating fresh. So while im sure they could sell some, I doubt most people would come back for much more after the first time.
It is common in agriculture that there is no existing market in which the price would cover the cost of moving the crop to that market. Destroying the crop minimizes the loss to the farmer.
Reminds me of Steinbeck:<p>“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.<p>There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
Not what's happening here. They are not destroying the trees to limit supply and jack up prices, but rather because no one wants them.<p>Nor are we destroying food while people go hungry; we produce more food than we eat by a considerable margin. What hunger remains in the world is a distribution problem, not a supply problem.
You have no idea what's happening in the USA do you lol.<p>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.<p>People are hungry, there's just no $$$ in feeding them.<p>Shame.
I assume there is market saturation for fresh peaches, that is, all the fresh peaches the market wants to buy are already in the market.
How would they establish those relationships with grocery stores, and get the peaches to them? Sure you could do it with a handful of local stores but the numbers we're talking about are a rounding error.
How many kilos of peaches would you say you get through in an average day?
It seems that del monte proper is not actually declaring bankruptcy, so how is it that the American tax payer is left picking up the check on this one? Privatized profits, socialized losses!
Fruit isn’t very efficient.
It’s all about maximizing value for creditors.<p>Similar with the Spirit bankruptcy, nobody wanted to save the company... they wanted to sell the assets to reduce losses.
[flagged]
> The impacts pushed a delegation of California lawmakers to ask the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide financial support to the fruit growers.<p>Seems like the opposite of the free market. Large farmers are usually the first people lining up for a government handout, and their representatives are regularly anti-market types.
Isn't that what is happening, minus the government assistance?
The U.S. has not had any sort of Free Market in agricultural products since at least 1942 - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn</a><p>Sure, there's plenty of puffed-up talk about having one. That's kinda like the talk about Santa bringing toys for good little girls and boys.
The Free Market magic hand™ does not apply to those who have capital and are facing losses. That's only when you don't have capital and are facing losses.
[flagged]
Nothing new here<p>“ The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.<p>There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” - John Steinbeck; Grapes of Wrath
So, they cut down the trees and do what? How is this supposed help anything?
The problem for the individual farmers is that they own a farm covered in peach trees, but they can't profitably sell peaches. The money will let them remove all the peach trees and then develop the land for some new crop.<p>This is also good for the remaining peach farmers because it keeps peach prices high, and also because massive forests of unattended peach trees leads to pest problems.
They plant something else. There just isn't demand for canned peaches anymore, so this is exactly what should happen. It's just unfortunate that it had to happen all at once with this bankruptcy rather than in a more organized fashion that could have prevented these unneeded orchards from being planted in the first place.
Significantly reduced water usage for one. The water is the limiting factor.
I wonder why they cannot be moved. There are machines that simply pluck them from the dirt and have them ready to go. They could auction them off for $1/each and still make a profit.<p><a href="https://interestingengineering.com/lists/7-mighty-machines-for-moving-trees-without-killing-them" rel="nofollow">https://interestingengineering.com/lists/7-mighty-machines-f...</a>
The land is the thing that is actually valuable here, so filling that land with a perfect grid of 6 foot craters in exchange for a few dollars is probably a bad call.
The problem isn't that the trees are in the wrong place. The problem is that there are more trees than demand for canned peaches. It's a failure of planning on the part of Del Monte and peach growers.
I agree in principle that reuse is the best imaginable outcome... but You underestimate the labor and cost of machines. I bet it costs $200 to pluck a single tree let alone ship it somewhere else usable.