If you try to force production and sale hard enough, the sale price can even go negative.

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.

It's so weird for you to be fearful of something when you don't know how farming works. Every year farmers cut down a bunch of trees and plant new ones in response to costs and market demand. So what. This is routine and seldom makes the news.

Canned fruit, like what these farmers were producing, has been losing popularity for years. You can't force consumers to like it.

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?

> 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

Peach trees take 2-3 years to bear fruit specially with grafting.

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.

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.

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?

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.

> A bunch of rotten fruit is _exceptionally valuable_

> right now I'm in a position where I could really use truckloads of rotten, inedible peaches if I could get them for free.

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:

https://en.excaliburshop.com/catalog/item/8951/fleret-merunk...

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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.

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Did they? How long have they been around?

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.

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.

By that logic, all "injustice" is "I don't like it when X happens" - there is nothing more.

My opinion is that it's mainly unjust to have invested so much in growing it to destroy it. Mistakes happen and this is the right decision for now given the situation but it is wasteful.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'll trade you for some Palisade peaches. Looking at year average temperatures the climates seem pretty similar, so I bet they are bomb!

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.

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

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.

Bay area produce is unparalleled - Tomatoes, peaches, figs, strawberries, etc.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My understanding is that it's all bred to be easier and faster to grow. Flavour isn't first in the value equation.

> Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.m

There’s a large swath of America that has a deeply ingrained mentality of “food is for fuel, not enjoyment.” It’s a Protestant idea that entered the culture and became ingrained to the point where nobody remembers the origins but are still influenced by it.

I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food 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.

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.

The US is big and fruit needs to be refrigerated to be transported. Refrigeration kills aromatics.

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.

> stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice

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.

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?

Exactly. I can see a lot of US apple juice bottles that contain a liquid resembling piss.

It's disgusting.

Real apple juice is dark brown and tastes nothing like the golden liquid mentioned above.

> Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.

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.

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.

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.

To be fair, though, there is plenty of wonderful, flavorful produce in the US. There are a few problems, though:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

He saw demand falling or what? What did he swap to?

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.

Which of course is not enough due to other expenses:

https://www.fb.org/market-intel/farm-bankruptcies-continued-...

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.

> for food security

They overproduce for votes. Countries without farmer blocks swinging elections stockpile non-perishables for food security.

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).