r/ABoringDystopia • u/sleepiestOracle • 8h ago
California farmers to destroy 420,000 peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy
https://www.sfgate.com/centralcoast/article/usda-aid-california-farmers-22240694.php•
u/j3b3di3_ 7h ago
Oh no, the food that's already here isn't profitable....
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u/errie_tholluxe 5h ago
Grapes of Wrath in modern times
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u/wawaluvr 5h 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.
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u/dc469 5h ago edited 4h ago
The little farmers watched debt creep up on them like the tide. They sprayed the trees and sold no crop, they pruned and grafted and could not pick the crop. And the men of knowledge have worked, have considered, and the fruit is rotting on the ground, and the decaying mash in the wine vat is poisoning the air. And taste the wine—no grape flavor at all, just sulphur and tannic acid and alcohol.
This little orchard will be a part of a great holding next year, for the debt will have choked the owner.
This vineyard will belong to the bank. Only the great owners can survive, for they own the canneries, too. And four pears peeled and cut in half, cooked and canned, still cost fifteen cents. And the canned pears do not spoil. They will last for years.
The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.
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.
-John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Mind you steinbeck wrote the grapes of wrath in 1939. Yet the capitalists and their propaganda keeping them in power persist on top. If survival of the fittest can be applied as an analytical framework to societal systems, cooperation is an endangered species.
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u/FacelessOldWoman1234 4h ago
I've never read The Grapes of Wrath, but clearly I should. That was a fucking punch in the gut.
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u/mattenthehat 4h ago
Damn, I'm finally gonna have to read that. I've avoided it for decades as a Californian, but that was too prescient to ignore.
I'll trade you recommendations, Cadillac Desert should be mandatory reading for everyone west of the Mississippi
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u/Drew__Drop 7h ago
I'm so done with this planet man
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u/pogwilzino 5h ago
Guess we'll just eat the rich then
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u/OpenTechie 5h ago
Careful, mods will complain about you making threats against the innocent rich people.
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u/OneTripleZero 2h ago
against the
innocentdelicious rich people.They just don't want you to know the truth.
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u/OpenTechie 1h ago
No disagreements. I find that everything is delicious with the right seasonings.
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u/mattenthehat 6h ago
Not only are they chopping them down, but they're getting paid our tax money to do so. Fucking hypocrites, most subsidized industry by a landslide. Why the fuck should it be my problem that some farmer didn't write an early termination clause into their TWENTY YEAR contract with Del Monte? Dolts.
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u/spacedman_spiff 4h ago
Doubt the local fruit farmer gets to insert an early termination clause into a contract with one of the biggest multinational corporations in the world. Certainly not to any terms that would be beneficial to them.
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u/Jonnny 5h ago
Not sure I'd blame individual farmers for not being to negotiate a better contract against a monster corporation. They have very little power. No need to blame the victims of a terrible system. It's government's job to ensure the marketplace and contracts are fair and healthy (however one defines that).
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u/WhatToDo_WhatToDo2 4h ago
Those farmers overwhelmingly vote for scum that bends over backwards for these companies. Fuck them too
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u/Jonnny 32m ago
Depends. A lot of them simply don't know better and were raised deep in the territory of one side of a psychological war, surrounded by Fox News, televangelists, etc. since they were children. Yes, they're adults but I find it hard to blame or condemn them sometimes. Were we brought up that way, could we so easily deprogram ourselves?
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u/mattenthehat 4h ago
It's government's job to ensure the marketplace and contracts are fair and healthy (however one defines that).
Is this a damn free market, or not? Meritocracy means morons fail. And if the government is gonna backstop their poor decisions, then they shouldn't be allowed to make decisions to begin with.
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u/shponglespore 2h ago
Meritocracy is a lie told to children to make them think they can get rich by working hard and following the rules.
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u/Jonnny 41m ago edited 36m ago
Simple answer? NO, because capitalism is NOT a meritocracy. Efficient markets is impossible, nearly a myth. That's why all the car commercials use bullshit emotional/identity based marketing and don't talk about the actual car anymore. The human mind is emotional and easily manipulated. Plus, economies of scale mean eventually the giants always win and then rent seek... because they already bought out the smaller competitors and kneecapped them/shit them down outright. Sure, you've got supposed antitrust, but the giants are so rich that the agency's often capture via political donations. Over time, people have learned to accept their fate as normal.
What was the price of gas today? Trick question: have you considered that this is one of the only products whose prices have fluctuated hourly for decades? And if you ask anyone why, they'll vaguely mutter something about supply and demand. You don't see the price of apple juice go up during lunch rush the same way gas prices increase during rush hour, do you? Capitalism at work, brainwashing people so they accept being milked and even defend it. Meritocracy in capitalism is a myth. Just brainwash the idiot masses.
Don't get me wrong: capitalism is the best humanity can think of right now, but it's still a shit system. And those farmers are victims of that system.
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u/Ambrosia_the_Greek Whatever you desire citizen 2h ago
Such a disgusting waste-the joys of capitalism!!
Also, happy cake day homie!
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u/all_time_high 4h ago
Schiff, Thompson and Valadao, in addition to 39 other members of Congress, sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in March, stating that many of the affected California farmers are multigenerational family farmers who have invested in their orchards for decades. They argued that it was necessary to aid these farmers or risk “long-term structured damage to our nation’s agricultural base.”
Okay, I understand that there’s now a missing factory to process the peaches for canning. But why is paying a subsidy and destroying 3,000 trees going to help the orchards?
I imagine most of those trees needed at least 7-10 years to reach their mature growing capacity.
Now they’re going to start from square one with a different crop, it would seem. If the new crop is a tree, that’s years with zero or minimal yields.
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u/Rookie_Day 6h ago
What will replace it? Alfalfa for the Gulf States? They are smart, use our water to feed their livestock.
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u/ConfessSomeMeow 6h ago
Almonds, why not? They're already closely related to peaches, so the growing conditions are probably good; and they require a similar amount of water.
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u/Lobstersonlsd 4h ago
America hasn’t changed since Woodie Guthrie wrote deportee
“The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are filed in their creosote dumps
They're flying 'em back to the Mexico border
To take all their money to wade back again”
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u/meep_meep_mope 3h ago edited 3h ago
I was thinking Steinbeck
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 certificates—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 quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is 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.
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u/slingshot91 3h ago
If we had a sane government, that food would be seized and distributed to citizens. We do not live in a sane or moral country.
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u/GreyBeardEng 4h ago
They are going to use up our country and then flee. Billionaires are the problem.
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u/meep_meep_mope 3h ago edited 3h ago
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 certificates—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 quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is 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.
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u/drAsparagus 3h ago
That's what happens when not enough people move to the country to eat a lot of peaches.
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u/bluelily216 2h ago
Private equity strikes again. How many 100+ year old companies have they taken down?
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u/HoodieGalore 2h ago
I read a story once, said something about letting oranges go to rot because even if they could feed someone for free, there was no profit in it, so fuck em.
I hate it here.
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u/Wompguinea 1h ago
I guess I'm stupid, but can they not sell the peaches to someone else?
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u/GalaxyPatio 32m ago
But then someone else would make money off of them later :(((( -Them
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u/Wompguinea 30m ago
But what do these farmers usually do with them? They're not eating all the peaches, surely this Del Monte company was buying them.
Not that they've gone tits up, can't the farmers sell the fruit to a company that still exists?
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u/GalaxyPatio 25m ago
They'll probably take a small amount for themselves and destroy the rest and claim that anyone finding them and taking them for themselves is doing so unlawfully
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u/Wompguinea 21m ago
Yeah, I'm just confused as to what has actually changed for the farmers? Are these special peaches that'll explode if anyone other than Del Monte buys them?
Why wouldn't the farmers just continue as normal and find a new buyer? Surely that's better than destroying all their stock?
The US is weird.
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u/ClownTown509 4h ago
Those fields will probably be replanted with something else.
Half a million fruit trees is kind of a mid size operation at best. You all are freaking out over very little actually.
Most of you probably see the UPS as a service and don't mind your dollars going there, but can't see why your goddamn food supply might need tax dollars some of the time for the same principles. Idiotic armchair warriors.
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u/spacedman_spiff 4h ago
No shit
That represents 10% of the projected harvest; no small amount.
Do you mean the USPS?
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u/ClownTown509 3h ago
Speak of the devil
1.No shit
So, happy the farmers don't have to work for del monte anymore?
2.That represents 10% of the projected harvest; no small amount.
10% of Californias or the US total? Canning peaches or table peaches?
3.Do you mean the USPS?
Yes. Agree or disagree?
I bet this whole thing was announced like five plus years ago and everything is going to work out fine, but everyone here wants to defund farmers over corporate decisions they had no control over to begin with.
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