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 ...
This may be about water.
Is there a Union Label in here somewhere?
Anytime I read about food whether on the tree or on the hoof being destroyed because of economics I figure God must take note.
The California Central Valley is being systematically and intentionally destroyed by the Democrats
The days of American Graffiti are long gone in rural and small town California and have been replaced by a critical mass illegal aliens, homeless people, welfare culture, meth labs, cartel pot farms and gangsters. sufficient to ruin the lives of long time residents.
Echoes of dairy farmers pouring milk down the drain and farmers in general paid not to grow crops during the Depression.
People are going to wish they had plenty of canned food on hand someday.
P.S. Del Monte had the best canned vegetables and fruits in the market. A real shame they went bankrupt.
And that’s why just about every industrial facility has lockout-tagout rules.
Maybe legal issues with patented GMO trees.
Very interesting story!
My mother is from Wasco and picked and packed peaches during the summer to put herself through college (40s). AS you know, temps in that area can easily be above 105 in the summer for weeks on end.
Didn’t know that about the cans - we always had canned Del Monte products on our dinner table when I was growing up, canned in heavy syrup...
Now, according to “reasons why Del Monte is going out of business:” — “American consumers have increasingly shifted away from shelf-stable, processed canned foods toward fresh, organic, or farm-to-table options, leading to surplus inventory and lower sales.”
Which is exactly what I see with my kids and grandkids’ generations.
This makes no sense to me.
The demand has not suddenly dropped by 420,000 clingstone peach trees worth of food.
The problem with that is these peach orchards in the Central valley take extraordinary amount of irrigation water. That water is not free, it’s charged for in “acre feet”. We’re talking multi millions of dollars. Without the infrastructure to process the peaches they produce no income. Without the irrigation the trees don’t survive. Unless someone has spent enough time in the Central valley it’s hard to comprehend the scale of the industrial agriculture the goes on.
Pick a Peach Day
Your idea: “a farm co-op loan to buy the cannery”,
would have been so excellent. I am many counties away from the Modesto area, but i know of some who have family in that area. They could have used an Advocate speaking for the current residents. No one with direct influence is considering these people right now.
My Opinion: They are used to hard work, and with appropriate management, they would properly maintain such a facility.
That Del Monte plant produced canned peaches, and those famous fruit cups your mom used to pack in your school lunch
Its not that Americans have simply stopped eating peaches.
Incompetent management, constant reorganization in the name of servicing ever-more debt destroyed that particular Del Monte business.
If it were in the hands of a private, family, or farmer-owned company, that packing business would be thriving.
Exactly! Heck, refine/distill them into alcohol and add them to the ethanol fuel stream for that matter. It’s idiotic to destroy things that took 20 years to grow...
He slipped while working around a train car, not cooked to death. Summer of 2024.
POTUSA?
“The demand is there for peaches.”
If 8 of 10 households had canned peaches in the pantry...in 1930...
Then 6 of 10 had ‘em in 1965
3 in 10 in 1975
2 in 10 in 1990
Less than 1 in 10 in 2025.
They got you again.
“How many countries have Del Monte?
We operate in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia with products sold in more than 80 countries.”
“North American Footprint: Beyond the now-shuttered California sites, the company’s operational footprint includes six production facilities within the United States.
International Footprint: Del Monte retains two production facilities located in Mexico.
Restructuring: Following the July 2025 bankruptcy, the brand’s assets are being sold to three separate companies: Fresh Del Monte Produce, B&G Foods, and Pacific Coast Producers”
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