So, they cut down the trees and do what? How is this supposed help anything?

CobrastanJorji 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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.

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modeless 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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fred_is_fred 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Significantly reduced water usage for one. The water is the limiting factor.

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hparadiz 6 hours ago | parent [-]

It's really not. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

California is not in any drought right now and our reservoirs last 10 years in the absolute worst case. Most of our water goes into the ocean.

I have no dog in the race in terms of what trees there are but if you take them down it'll be invasive South American pepper trees or mustard grass. As long as it's used and sequestering carbon it's all gravy.

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bix6 6 hours ago | parent [-]

10 years? Says who? I’ve heard 2 years in a worst case.

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hparadiz 6 hours ago | parent [-]

With respect. It's a dumb internet-ism not grounded in reality.

https://oroville.lakesonline.com/Level/

You can see the water level there for Lake Orville which is the source for the California aqueduct system that feeds part of the Central Valley and the 20 million living in Southern California. Given that non-residential accounts for 92% of all the water use California is never in any danger of not being able to provide water to residential. That would require 20 years without rain and that also assumes we don't build new reservoirs.

California is the size of a country. The North is in an area more like the Pacific Northwest than any desert.

We just lived through a worst case scenario that lasted 3 years and only on the 3rd year of that did we even bother to start water restrictions. For the past two years we've been full to 100% and having to let it go in the spring.

I did a ton of research on this cause I own a property supplied by this system.

	▲	bix6 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Interesting thank you for the info! I will read into this a bit.