Peaches Continued from Page 1
Former Del Monte growers who re- moved peach orchards in the Yuba-Sut- ter area said they planned to plant other tree crops—most likely almonds, wal- nuts or prunes, or possibly pistachios. While those crops may be viable alter- natives—many peach farmers already grow them—the loss of peach orchards weighed on families that have grown the fruit for generations. “If your family has been farming peach- es for a long time, there is an attachment to it,” said Kulwant Johl, whose grandfather began farming in the Yuba-Sutter area in 1924 and purchased the family’s first peach orchard in 1946. He said the labor-intensive crop was at- tractive to Punjabi farmers who immigrat- ed to the region because it was possible to make a profit on relatively small acreage. “We all got established growing peach- es,” said Khera, whose grandfather began farming in the area in 1978. “There is defi- nitely a sense of pride in growing peaches, especially for the Punjabi community.” Today, peaches appear on the seals of both Yuba and Sutter counties, and an an- nual peach festival is held in Marysville. While the fruit’s image is firmly stamped on the region, farmers said they were start- ing to wonder how much longer they will be able to grow it. “It’s sad,” Khera said. “It seems a little bit like the beginning of the end.” Caleb Hampton is an editor at Ag Alert. He can be reached at champton@cfbf.com.
The historic industry, which is cen- tered in the Yuba-Sutter area, was once supported by dozens of processors. But declining demand due to the year-round availability of fresh fruit, combined with rising production costs and cheap im- ports, caused bearing acreage to fall from a peak of more than 63,000 in 1969 to less than 14,000 in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The loss of Del Monte’s business was expected to result in the removal this year of about 3,000 acres of peach trees, according to the California Canning Peach Association. “I would say the majority of it has been taken out,” said Sutter County farmer Ranjit Davit, who chairs the peach associ- ation’s board of directors. In June, the California League of Food Producers reported bearing acreage had dropped to about 10,000 this year. Farmers typically plant cling peach or- chards—at a cost of thousands of dollars per acre—only after securing contracts with processors that last 20 years, the
Part of a mechanical peach harvester is used at a Marysville orchard to filter out fruit that is too small. A spring heat wave caused more fruit than usual to ripen before meeting size requirements.
before it had grown to the size required for canning. “The fruit is looking pretty rough,” said Johl, who operates two of the three receiv- ing stations that grade randomly selected fruit from each truckload of peaches grown in the Yuba-Sutter area. He said in the past decade he had never seen so much fruit rejected for being too small. Yields were
is not entirely resolved. During an auction of the company’s assets, PCP licensed some of its shelf-stable fruit product brands. To stock those products, the grow- er-owned cooperative picked up about a third of Del Monte’s cling peach acreage on one-year contracts. But as of last week, the future of that acreage remained uncertain. Sutter County grower Bhaavan Khera, whose family this year is farming most of its peach acreage on a one-year deal with PCP, said the arrangement left growers guessing how much to invest in their trees. “It’s still a stressful time for a lot of for- mer Del Monte growers who got picked up, and it’s even worse for the guys that didn’t,” Khera said.
orchard’s esti- mated lifespan. It can take sev- eral years for a farmer to earn back the initial investment, and Del Monte’s bankruptcy ex- posed growers to steep losses. “It’s a huge setback,” said Johl, who re- moved 80 of his 120 acres of peach trees this year, the youngest of which were just reaching matu- rity. “They’re all pushed out and burned up.”
down about 12% from the initial estimate on the earliest cling peach variet- ies, with subse- quent varieties faring better but still below aver- age, according to the peach association. Last year, Cali- fornia produced about 211,000 tons of cling peaches. With the removal of acreage formerly under Del Monte
Third-generation peach grower Kulwant Johl is pictured last week during harvest in Marysville.
contracts, the initial forecast for this year’s crop was 170,000 tons. Last week, the peach association revised its projection to 155,000 tons. Yuba County grower Kulwant Johl, who is Sarb Johl’s cousin, said the quality chal- lenges this year meant growers will earn less from the crop and were spending more getting it off trees and trucked to canner- ies. Even after stationing a quality control worker at each bin as fruit was picked by hand, he ran peaches from some orchard blocks this year through a mechanical sort- er to get rid of small fruit before loading the peaches onto trucks. Growers said they were also impacted by higher costs for fuel, fertilizer, labor and other inputs. Meanwhile, their earnings remained flat, at best, as the peach asso- ciation and PCP agreed to keep the same base price as last year of $610 per ton mi- nus varying penalties for offgrade fruit. “It still pencils out, but the profit margin is going down,” Kulwant Johl said. The fallout from Del Monte’s bankruptcy
In April, USDA allocated $9 million in aid for affected growers. The peach asso- ciation, which contributed an additional $1.5 million, was set to begin accepting applications for the funding this week. Rich Hudgins, president and CEO of the peach association, described the aid as a “life preserver” that will partially cover the cost of removing peach trees and transi- tioning to a different crop. “It’s allowing the grower to stay afloat for another year,” he said. According to court documents, the Del Monte contracts growers lost were val- ued at $555 million in total, with some having begun just last year and been valid through 2044. “It’s been tough,” Johl said. This year’s harvest, which started May 30 and was expected to conclude in mid-Au- gust, has hardly improved fortunes. A searing spring heat wave sped fruit development by more than two weeks, causing much of the state’s crop to ripen
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