Posted on 05/07/2026 8:19:51 AM PDT by algore
Central California farmers are expected to gain up to $9 million in federal aid to help remove 420,000 clingstone peach trees following the closure of Del Monte Foods’ canneries earlier this year.
Del Monte permanently closed its Modesto and Hughson canneries in April after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last July. The factory closures left hundreds of workers without a job while also leaving farmers in dire straits as they navigated what to do with their crops. In March, the Sacramento Bee reported that many Central California farmers had their 20-year contracts to grow peaches with Del Monte canceled while facing a $550 million loss in revenue.
The impacts pushed a delegation of California lawmakers to ask the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide financial support to the fruit growers. Last week, California Sen. Adam Schiff and Reps. Mike Thompson and David Valadao announced in a news release that the USDA had approved their request to pay California farmers to remove around 3,000 acres of clingstone peach trees before the harvest season. According to the news release, removing 50,000 tons of peaches from production could help growers save about $30 million in losses.
“For generations, Central Valley family farms have relied on Del Monte’s Modesto facility to process their peaches, and its sudden closure left growers with thousands of pounds of fruit and no clear path forward,” Valadao said in the news release.
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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Some regulation I’m sure.
I’ve been ordered to destroy healthy pistachio trees and peanut crops before.
I just cut the pistachios back unduly so they counted as “destroyed” and they grew back great and turned cattle loose on the peanuts.
We somehow produce ample food despite the stupidity of our government.
why did it close???
DEMOCRATS AND PANDEMIC
Exactly. And, likely the likes of Monsanto/Cargill/Bill Gates and other nefarious entities. (Dems pretty much covers that, tho :)
Depends...why did the cannery go out of business? I do know people aren’t buying canned goods like they used to.
Now Frozen peaches may be a better solution. But I’m not in that market so not really sure. But I do recall reading about canned goods no longer being popular.
Del Monte had the best peaches. I worked at the Del Monte plant in the 1970’s and early 80’s. It was a good summer job when I was going to school to learn computer science. I learned that the best peaches are the halves in the Del Monte can. They picked out the largest and nicest ones and packed them in heavy syrup.
All other canned peaches were lower quality. They made slices when they couldn’t get a nice half. They had Del Monte slices in the tiny cans that made them the most money. The nicest slices went in Del Monte cans. The less nice ones went in unlabeled cans with light syrup and were sold for store brands. When people say that the store brand is just as good, they have never worked in a cannery.
The lowest quality that were too good to throw away went in the gallon size cans that went to SE Rykoff who is now Sysco Foods. Those are the ones that are used for cafeterias and hospitals and to make pie filling.
Del Monte was bought by RJ Reynolds tobacco company along with Nabisco and General Foods corporation back in the 80’s. Cigarette companies were moving like the mafia into legitimate businesses. I didn’t pay attention when they divested all those assets. I just now learned that Del Monte was on its own.
>>I would imagine the liability of having people climb up trees on their own ladders (or no ladders at all) would be a problem
Have them sign a waiver.. problem solved.
I love peaches. This is going to suck.
So no one thought to try to turn them into peach schnapps? or sell to those who do?
Zappa’s Peaches en regalia
Not so obvious if Del Monte, with extensive experience, went belly up doing it.
no matter how we might parse it, it is patently dysfunctional to destroy such a large food source
people still need to eat food
I live in a rural area of Northern Commiefornia. We are surrounded by orchards fields. We have a peach orchard at the end of our street. A few years ago it was an almond orchards. Before that it was a plum
Orchard. Farmers are always rotating their crops. There’s a cornfield just down the road. A few years ago it was a cotton field. Before that it was a sunflower field.
How is a fruit cannery like an oil refinery? I don't know, but somehow it is.
Maybe it's location (CA).
Maybe the gov’t needs to buy the cannery to make commodity canned food.
> why did it close???<
I suspect there is more to the story. SF Gate probably doesn’t want to dig too deep into the horrible regulatory environment for businesses in California. Water use restrictions, pesticides, fertilizers, minimum wage, benefits requirements, land purchase regulations and property taxes are all suspect, too.
EC
I love canned peaches, but I buy organic after seeing how the fields are treated here. I don’t think anything gets more sprays than peaches.
These orchards will be replanted in almonds after the farmers take out another loan. And the banks will do well on those almond orchards.
Can this be at all attributed to the predatory attitude of the state to business?
Georgia is thrilled.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/man-cooked-to-death-in-oven-with-tuna-in-accident-1506336
“Man cooked to death in oven with tuna in accident”
“Jose Melena was performing maintenance in a 35-foot (11-meter)-long oven at the company’s Santa Fe Springs plant before dawn Oct. 11, 2012, when a co-worker, who mistakenly believed Melena was in the bathroom, filled the pressure cooker with 12,000 pounds (5,440 kilograms) of canned tuna and it was turned on.”
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