the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
May 18, 2026
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is giving peach growers in California’s Central Valley 9 million dollars. No, not to grow peach trees, but to destroy them. And no, there is nothing wrong with the trees.
The growers are destroying 420,000 peach trees because the company that has been buying the peaches, Del Monte Foods, closed its two canning facilities in California. Left with more than 50,000 tons of peaches without a buyer, the growers will pull the peach trees to plant another crop.
Growing peaches requires an upfront investment. It takes up to 10 years for planted trees to bear their full load of fruit, which they then provide for another 10 years or so. So, Del Monte had been signing 20-year contracts with growers. But now the company deems canned peaches not profitable enough, which it blames on changing consumer habits and an increase in tin can costs due to Trump’s tariffs.
Del Monte has been a big name in fruit and vegetable distribution for 140 years. But the company and its various divisions have been sold about a dozen times in the last 40 years, including to private equity firms, which saddled Del Monte with a lot of debt in the process.
In July 2025, Del Monte filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, to work out an agreement with the lenders of its over 900-million-dollar debt. But bankruptcy laws allow the owners of the company to just walk away from their obligations to the 70 peach growers Del Monte had made 20-year contracts with. Not to mention all the jobs that have disappeared—the Modesto cannery, for example, one of the two canneries Del Monte shut down, had alone employed about 1,800 people, including seasonal workers.
Thanks to lobbying with Washington politicians, the growers are getting some of their losses back—paid for by taxpayers. By working people, that is, who will also be facing the same high food prices, if not even higher, at the store. And an enormous number of perfectly good peach trees are destroyed in the process—all so that more profit can keep flowing into the bank accounts of big capitalists.
It’s long past time to send this extremely wasteful system to the waste basket.