Comment by oxag3n
18 hours ago
That's what happens when "family farms" rely on a large industrial complex and grow a mono-culture that doesn't have uses other than canning.
It was an easy, steady cash-positive business until it wasn't. If those farmers thought what is final product and who benefits from it most, they'd grow diversified crops to sell locally, which many California family farms do.
> they'd grow diversified crops to sell locally
This is out of touch, many of these farmers are 100+ miles from a large population center. They can’t move enough produce at a local store to stay in business.
Maybe, but it's not an argument against diversification. When it comes to agriculture, the incentives should be aligned such that a single point of failure like this is highly unlikely.
That's not to say it's an easy problem to solve.
> That's not to say it's an easy problem to solve.
Incorrect. You simply decide that having less than 5 suppliers at any level is unacceptable and you bust companies up, repeatedly until you have those suppliers. That way when one goes bankrupt, you don't wind up with complete supply chain disintegration.
The solution is quite straightforward. However, it requires an electorate that has a couple of brain cells to rub together in order to understand the solution. And 30% of the US is willfully hostile to any real solutions while another 30% is happy to fiddle while everything burns.
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And conversely you can't grow enough food local to a large population center to feed everyone.
Christopher Alexander figured this one out in A Pattern Language:
https://www.patternlanguageindex.com/patterns/city-country-f...
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the private equity buyout of Del Monte, that's got to be a big factor.
> It was an easy, steady cash-positive business until it wasn't.
This is out of touch. Growing fruit is one of the most difficult tasks in farming.
> If those farmers thought what is final product and who benefits from it most, they'd grow diversified crops to sell locally, which many California family farms do.
What if they can't make much money doing so?
Farmers care about making money.
And farmers that don't care about making money aren't farmers any more.
Agriculture is a highly competitive business - even large scale agriculture still has very stiff price competition. There isn't a lot of fat to burn on charitable gestures and what is there isn't on the scale of maintaining such a large unproductive orchard.
It sucks - don't misread my statement. It is deeply unfortunate and we should consider mitigations for the future - but the party to throw blame at here isn't the farmers and neither should they be expected to bear the cost.
Agricultural exports are a $23 billion dollar business in California alone. Which is about 1/3 of the crops grown.
This is what happens when the federal government uses a 1940s era plan to manage the economy.