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.

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

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.

▲ BrenBarn 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	robocat 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I always wonder where consumer surplus fits into arguments about profit. Although in this particular situation clearly the consumer surplus wasn't enough to keep consumers buying Del Monte products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_surplus If we measure consumer surplus as a percentage, how would it compare to business profits as a percentage? Edit: `Nobel laureate William Nordhaus studied the historical data of the U.S. economy and concluded that innovators and corporations capture only a tiny fraction of the total social value they create. Consumers capture ~98% of the value in the form of surplus. Producers capture ~2%.`

▲ private_nrg 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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▲ PowerElectronix 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They will be replaced with something else, don't feel bad for the trees, they had a good run.

	▲	oldsecondhand 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Did they? How long have they been around?

▲ quickthrowman 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲ baggy_trough 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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?

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munk-a 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	lokar 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The waste would have been continuing to use large amounts of water to grow a crop with declining popularity.
	▲	baggy_trough 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		They are going to naught now, so that the resources (land) can be better used. The trees were productive during their life.
	▲	lotsofpulp 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>but the lack of forethought and planning is concerning. How did you determine this? Do you expect every single venture with forethought and planning to "succeed" (however you define that)? 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?

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throwaway7783 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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

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

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▲ colechristensen 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What is unjust about cutting down an orchard producing a product people aren't buying?

This isn't pristine old growth forest, it has no great ecology.

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munk-a 5 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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nradov 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well then the solution is simple: people need to stop making mistakes. We should all have perfect foresight, and never guess wrong about counterparty risk or changes in consumer tastes.

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colechristensen 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I see people finding too often that change is injustice, and this is strange.

	▲	munk-a 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think I just have a strange personal definition of injustice - but the effort put into growing this orchard to destroy is could have gone to better projects. The fact that so much of an investment is being wasted is, to me, a misallocation of resources that were unjustly allotted to this failed venture. A more just outcome would have been these resources and efforts going to projects that actually yielded benefits to people. I've noted this elsewhere but "injustice" was semantically baked into the OP so I retained that wording but my brain really stretched the term here to align better with "wasteful". I can certainly argue to their equivalence but I think if multiple people have gotten hung up on the term I've committed a semantic misstep.

▲ 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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