8 ms·

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

• kshahkshah 5mo ago
  Seems like an opportunity to form a coop. I guess I’m being naive though. I just don’t know how
• unglaublich 5mo ago
  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.
  • modeless 5mo ago
    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.
    • Modified3019 5mo ago
      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. https://www.hazelnutbargaining.com/ https://www.hazelnutbargaining.com/
    • bix6 5mo ago
      He saw demand falling or what? What did he swap to?
      • modeless 5mo ago
        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). 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!
        • bix6 5mo ago
          Smart man! LBOs are such a plague we need better regulation. Farming is hard. I heard Urea prices are up 2x since the start of the year. How many farmers will go out of business because of that…
  • munk-a 5mo ago
    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. 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.
  • hluska 5mo ago
    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. 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.
• munk-a 5mo ago
  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. 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.
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  • PowerElectronix 5mo ago
    They will be replaced with something else, don't feel bad for the trees, they had a good run.
    • oldsecondhand 5mo ago
      Did they? How long have they been around?
  • modeless 5mo ago
    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.
    • private_nrg 5mo ago
      [flagged]
    • BrenBarn 5mo ago
      Exactly. That is what is missing in this discussion. If you want to cut down the trees, fine, but those people who profited should pay for it.
• hnthrow0287345 5mo ago
  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.
  • xboxnolifes 5mo ago
    Farmers are literally subsidized to over-produce for food security.
    • hnthrow0287345 5mo ago
      Which of course is not enough due to other expenses: https://www.fb.org/market-intel/farm-bankruptcies-continued-to-climb-in-2025 https://www.fb.org/market-intel/farm-bankruptcies-continued-... https://www.adamsandreese.com/the-ledger/rising-farm-distress-preparing-for-increased-agriculture-bankruptcies-in-2026-2027 https://www.adamsandreese.com/the-ledger/rising-farm-distres... And those farms get bought up and folded into for-profit operations. You simply can't fix this in the current system.
    • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
      > for food security They overproduce for votes. Countries without farmer blocks swinging elections stockpile non-perishables for food security.
      • xboxnolifes 5mo ago
        For both. With or without the voting block, they still serve the purpose of over-producing.
        • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
          > With or without the voting block, they still serve the purpose of over-producing Overproduction is the method. Food security the aim. If they weren’t a swing voting block, the overproduction loses purpose.
• Aurornis 5mo ago
  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 repurposed to growing something that the market will absorb. 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. 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.
  • HoldOnAMinute 5mo ago
    The new crop will be grapes of wrath
    • msarrel 5mo ago
      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. 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.
• dylan604 5mo ago
  > and call it great injustice. 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. 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.
  • quotz 5mo ago
    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.
    • doubled112 5mo ago
      My understanding is that it's all bred to be easier and faster to grow. Flavour isn't first in the value equation.
      • dylan604 5mo ago
        And longer shelf life. And flavor isn't in the top 10
      • quotz 5mo ago
        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
    • kstrauser 5mo ago
      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. 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. 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. https://share.icloud.com/photos/0ebgyxOMT9LpyjhfKuLQWD0kw https://share.icloud.com/photos/0ebgyxOMT9LpyjhfKuLQWD0kw
• sudhirc 5mo ago
  [dead]
• BloondAndDoom 5mo ago
  As someone close to agriculture this is the only true response in this thread and anyone understand fruit business knows this.
• heathrow83829 5mo ago
  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). 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.
  • navigate8310 5mo ago
    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.
    • fhn 5mo ago
      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.
      • raisedbyninjas 5mo ago
        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.
        • gs17 5mo ago
          Don't forget the bugs. My parents planted a cherry tree thinking the birds would be the biggest pest. Then we found every single cherry on the tree had a cherry fruit fly larva inside it. If you don't cover or spray them at the right time, the entire crop is ruined.
      • NotMichaelBay 5mo ago
        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.
• boringg 5mo ago
  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. 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. Have a banner year of peach sales in California for super cheap... market corrects for its past mistakes.
  • colechristensen 5mo ago
    >Have a banner year of peach sales in California for super cheap... market corrects for its past mistakes. Bankrupt everyone who grows peaches then? There are actual costs in growing, harvesting, and delivering produce to market you know.
  • kelnos 5mo ago
    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.
  • traderj0e 5mo ago
    This idea sounds like continued misallocation
• ghastmaster 5mo ago
  > 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. 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.
• phkahler 5mo ago
  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.
  • SoftTalker 5mo ago
    And they usually don't introduce something everywhere at once. They do trial markets, or short-term runs. If something proves very popular (e.g. chicken nuggets) it eventually rolls out everywhere.
• alnwlsn 5mo ago
  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). 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 still full. 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. If one truck carries that much food, and then there's however many other tomato trucks each day, then that's a lot.
  • mh- 5mo ago
    In the first half of this comment I thought you were setting us up for a old-Google-style interview question. I felt oddly disappointed to not find a Fermi problem at the end.
• rayiner 5mo ago
  > Of course, people who never approached agriculture will be appalled at this, and call it great injustice. Uneducated rice farmers in Bangladesh would understand the problem better than the people complaining about this.
• yvsong 5mo ago
  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.
• datadeft 5mo ago
  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.
  • mh- 5mo ago
    [dead]
  • barry-cotter 5mo ago
    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.
• worldsavior 5mo ago
  Then why do they use so much land in the first place?
• duxup 5mo ago
  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. 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.
• roysting 5mo ago
  Although you have a point regarding this specific situation; the real, bigger issue is this industrial scale, low quality, high quantity food production system.
• thomastjeffery 5mo ago
  That's the problem with depending on monopoly for coordination. Maybe if we didn't let one corporation control so much of the distribution chain, we would avoid both the decision to overproduce and the stagnation of overproduced goods. Of course, the real problem is that we have accepted the notion that food must profit someone, even when we have too much of it.
• KumaBear 5mo ago
  I’m actually appalled when farms are unable to sell their crop they destroy them instead of just idk give it away or something.
  • ricochet11 5mo ago
    This relates to what the first poster said though, at these quantities “just give it away” is incredibly expensive. Trucks, workers, cleaning, fuel, etc. Just give it away still requires someone to pay for it
• Semaphor 5mo ago
  We recently had two cases in Germany of farmers giving away hundreds of tons of potatoes, as they'd have been destroyed otherwise. In one case they were paid for, but the store didn't want them anymore, in the other case it was overproduction and not worth transporting at the price they'd fetch.
• kakacik 5mo ago
  You guys just didn't discover the beauty of fermentation and distillation, one can process rather large quantities and all you need is bunch of vats. Private smaller distilleries I believe work as a service in US too (as in you bring your stuff in and they process it professionally so no methanol inside). Its quite popular in some parts of central Europe (say Czech republic) and resulting drink, in say 45% content of alcohol its fruity sweet and smooth and has absolutely nothing to do with cheap flavored chemical crap from potato/sugar beet one can buy in shops.
• IG_Semmelweiss 5mo ago
  Better idea: 1. Find a random large, barren public land nearby 2. Dump all fruit there. 3. Wait 15 years 4. New enchanted forest available for public use [1] [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/costa-rica-let-juice-company-dump-their-orange-peels-forestand-it-helped-180964666/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/costa-rica-let-jui...
• rekabis 5mo ago
  Another issue here is that these are clingstone peaches. Clingstones are best for mechanized processing, which needs the peach to physically hold itself together while the machine does its thing. Consumers overwhelmingly prefer freestone peaches due to the ease at which they can be quartered and de-stoned by hand without making a total mess. So on a personal level, my calm was greatly enhanced once I came across the full description of the crop type. There isn’t much use for clingstone outside of mechanized processing, as consumers just don’t want clingstone peaches due to how difficult they are to cut apart cleanly. Source: orchardist in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, Canada’s western-end orchard region. I grow apples, but I know many other orchardists, including peach growers.