How can you order a farmer to destroy their trees? I hope he fights in a higher court. Wish I’d heard about the nectarine giveaway. I’d have gone to pick some.
You have an orchard unapproved by the komisariat, Farmer. You disrupt the logistical system you see. Perhaps you would like to name few names to make punishment more less harsher, yes?
Edit: bah there is a fair explanation for all of this below. Or above, depending on your point of view.
Mora says that around half of the nectarines provided to Giumarra by him in 2020 were thrown away. That, he alleged, cut into his profits.
I don’t think this is an open and shut case. There’s got to be some bullshit in the contract about minimum quality thresholds and mandatory order volumes.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
–John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
🫳🎤
Amid the battle, Mora chose to give away the nectarines he had grown instead of leaving them to rot.
However, on August 13, a jury at Fresno County Superior Court ruled that the Central Valley farmer did break his contract, although Giumarra was awarded no damages, according to documents obtained by the Fresno Bee.
Mora revealed in a video posted to TikTok that a judge had ruled that his trees had to be destroyed before the trial even began.
this is why they dont want us to own the means of production. all of us are glorified slaves who arent entitled to fucking food.
You will own nothing, and you will be happy. Until morale improves.
Bruh, the jury and judge are corrupt and terrible people. We Needs more judges and juries who are against corporate greed
That requires education.
deleted by creator
However, on August 13, a jury at Fresno County Superior Court ruled…
🤨
I knew it was gonna be this guy…
He licensed a specific breed of fruit tree, which is about the stupidest thing you can do.
Then he signed a marketing agreement, to only sell to that same company, the same one that he licensed it from. Which is literally the dumbest thing possible, because they have a financial incentive to fuck you over the second they establish their own orchids to meet supply. 100% of theirs will always sell first. With prices set as that as the full supply, yours become emergency backup that quickly rots.
Predictably, they refused like 50% of his crop one year.
Then he sold to someone else, and obviously got sued.
The only people who can legally own the trees now, is the company that sued him. And as he’s very unlikely to want to sell an established orchid to them, or anyone else who would legally have to do business with that company, they have to be destroyed.
The fruit itself, likely ran out incredibly quickly. This was a huge story a couple months ago.
But it’s one thing to do it with crops like wheat and corn that you at least plant every year. Fucking fruit trees live decades. Locking distribution rates without guaranteed sale is just asking to get squeezed out. The company likely planned on buying from him cheap, which again is the reason he’s destroying them.
This is fair and I withdraw my former outrage.
Still tho.
It’s still quite arguable that this is a predatory agreement, designed to simply cut competitors. There’s not simply an infinite limit to how much you can sign away in a contract. Since farmers often have to operate independently, and there’s a (not always undeserved) mistrust of lawyers, it makes sense they’d have to consider some agreements without representation present.
You would assume a degree of sophistication form someone who owns a multi-million-dollar farming operation. It’s not like it’s a mobile phone contract.
Predictably, they refused like 50% of his crop one year.
Then he sold to someone else, and obviously got sued.
This shit should be illegal. If they want to lock him in to only selling to them, it should be required that they buy everything he’s produced at an agreed on rate before he does any work.
It’s a private agreement he signed voluntarily after he had the rights to grow and while he could sell to anyone for any price…
It’s legal in the same way I can sell you my house for a dollar, I could do it, but I’d be an idiot.
He didn’t have to sign that, he just did it.
There’s shit that should be illegal no matter how a contract is written. An example that comes to mind is how landlords love to put things in a lease that aren’t legally enforceable.
Then it sounds like you want an authoritarian nanny state…
Which actually isn’t surprising
Pre-emptive edit:
The point being if “unfair” contracts are illegal, then the government is the one saying what contracts are fair.
And a single look in the general direction of the American government, should I dictate why that’s a bad plan.
The most likely result, is the rich abuse it, and suddenly “fair” just means “fuck over the poors”.
Huh? There are no contracts at all without a state.
Whether or not a contract is “fair” has absolutely nothing to do with legality.
If I want to sell you my house for a $1, then that’s legal.
If you manipulate me, or coerce me, not legal.
That is how it is supposed to work.
If I can’t sell you my house for $1, what price will the state let me sell?
$1k? 10k? 100k?
What happens when there’s a market crash and the state doesn’t want to acknowledge by letting homes sell for less?
What about the other way? What if they say 100k is too much and no matter what my house can only be sold for 10k? Do you think that would be a land of cheap houses or do you realize it would quickly lead to only rentals ever being available and shit benefits from property taxes while landlord income skyrockets?
And I know, a one time sale of a house isn’t the same as contracted selling of a crop…
But trust me, this is easier to explain and pretty much the same thing.
Hell, I grew tobacco growing up, and like most crops the government will buy pretty much anything at below market price exactly for stuff like this. It’s a hugely important part of being any kind of farmer to know about this program
I don’t expect any of you to know anything about that
But a guy buying an orchard should.
And anyone signing any sort of sales and distribution deal, needs a lawyer.
If it’s exclusive you need the most lawyer you can afford
Contracts are meaningless without the state as an enforcement mechanism. The state has an interest in contracts, which it defines in like, ‘contract laws’. These laws put superseding constraints on contracts. I understand, that in the case of this farmer, no laws may have been broken. What I’m saying is that there could (and perhaps should) be such a law. Just like in a residential lease, the landlord can’t override legal protections.
Yes and manufacturing and mining occupations volunteered to work in horrible conditions before they were regulated. They had a choice. They could have just not worked those jobs. What idiots. /s
He didn’t have to sign that, he just did it.
Or maybe he was coerced, or didn’t have any other options, or trusted the company was going to give him a fair shake. Maybe he is an idiot. That doesn’t mean that corporations with millions to spend on lawyers should be able to destroy peoples livelihoods because they can throw more money at the legal system. The law is supposed to protect everyone. And destroying perfectly good food on top of that?
Or maybe he was coerced,
Then it’s illegal and not valid…
Or didn’t have any other options,
What? He could have sold to anyone, and signed an exclusive distribution contract…
He had every other option and threw them all away
or trusted the company was going to give him a fair shake.
Then he’s a fucking idiot…
And destroying perfectly good food on top of that?
How the fuck are you this deep in this thread and still think food was destroyed?
The fruit itself, likely ran out incredibly quickly. This was a huge story a couple months ago.
Like, just in general, I’m not going to keep explaining the same shit, when you’re clearly not understanding this. I don’t even think you’re reading these comments.
Literally the first line of the fucking article:
A California farmer has been ordered to destroy his fruit orchard after giving away thousands of pounds of free food.
From the other article:
Under the agreements, Mora was to pay Giumarra a royalty of $2.50 per tree and a 4% production royalty based off the gross sales of the fruit the trees produced, as well as a sales commission.
“They sold me hope and a big dream that I thought I could participate in with them," he said.
Mora alleges that up to half of the nectarines he provided to Giumarra in 2020 were thrown away, reducing his profits. The company disputes this, and the judge overseeing the case found that the statute of limitations for those claims had passed.
They fucked him.
And he didn’t have other options, this kind of fruit is patented (also bullshit) and he had to sign on with this packer. Trees take years to grow, he can’t just switch over to another one at the drop of a hat.
It’s sad that we just make these kinds of legal agreements about living things that take a long time to grow and live and then just capriciously say no sorry you have to slaughter them all because contracts?
We don’t deserve this earth.
To be specific:
What you’re upset about is genetic copyrights, and if this pissed you off there is much much worse that goes on.
It’s far from the biggest issue, but Def needs attention and I encourage anyone to look into it and try to get involved.
For an example:
Company’s that own a patent can release spores causing cross contamination, then sue a farmer at harvest for their crop containing copyrighted genes.
And there’s nothing the farmer can really do, it’s a genetic copyright, it doesn’t matter how genes got there.
Corporations can “lose” their property, and still retain rights on later generation plants.
There is no possible way to stop it. Pollination is just gonna do what pollination does, it’s nature.
Thank you for this informational and well explained post!
So what’s the guy thinking when he signs these terrible deals? It may be the wrong thing to do but he’s thinking something at the time he does it, right? I don’t buy facile explanations like “he’s dumb” or “because capitalism.”
Because the company probably promised him the moon, telling him “you don’t have to worry about finding buyers or selling at farmers markets, just sell all of your product to us in one lump sum!”
You know how great a deal that is? What he didn’t expect is the fine print of them growing their own supply, and then prioritizing selling theirs while half of his crop goes to waste, un-bought, rotting, and all of a sudden his income just got cut in half because of this scumbag company. So what does he do? He sees that it’s going to happen again, so he sells the original company all the fruit they would have taken, and a small amount to other sources. Because that’s half his freaking income. And the company? Of course, they would rather the fruit spoil and rot, instead of another company or another person at a farmers market selling “their” fruit, that they never paid for but “licensed” in that shitty deal they got him to sign.
It’s bullshit, it’s immoral, there goes another farmer, and his farm, from this earth. You’ll never be able to buy his fruit again.
It was referenced as a “marketing contract” so it’s possible he just legitimately didn’t know it was in there, but he’s still an idiot for signing contracts without a lawyer even if that was the case.
But I mean, a con job is short for a confidence job.
Dude got manipulated one way or another, same way trump can still somehow hire lawyers and other employees despite decades of openly not paying them.
Usually by exploring greed. They likely made it sound like a favor to him and they didn’t normally do it for just anyone.
Yeah, the amount of predatory BS that goes unchecked in our food systems is simply amazing. God bless the MBAs.
I’d be curious to see exactly what the judge ordered for destruction. With fruit trees (some, maybe not all- i’m not an arborist) you can cut the tree down and graft onto suckers or bark inlay to get a new fruit tree. For an established orchard this would probably be way better and would fix the awful licensing problem, but given how awful everything about this story is they probably demanded the orchard be burned down and salt sown in the earth.
I watched a documentary about these agricultural practices.
Taking the deal is not always about being dumb, i don’t know about this specific case but farmers are under immense pressure to accept deals from these corporations who often hold real local power.
You will sell your farm or get bullied into complacency.
Do you remember the name of the documentary? I’m always on the hunt for good ones I haven’t seen.
It think it was a television broadcast of a current affairs journalism type of show. I don’t think its available online, sorry :(
No worries, I appreciate you replying!
Predictably, they refused like 50% of his crop one year.
They should have been obligated to purchase all of the crop produced to match the restriction on who he could sell to.
That’s the gotcha. It’s exactly how the judge should have ruled, but that’s what common sense would say, and contract law doesn’t require the contract to adhere to any kind of common sense.
It’s the kind of hole in a contract I’d have expected any competent contract attorney to catch, but perhaps the farmer didn’t use one, which is unfortunate.
Business to business contracts isn’t like consumer contracts, if it’s not in the contract there’s very little protect you
The farmer, or rather his lawyer, didn’t think ahead enough to get that in the contract. Any experienced futures lawyer would have made sure of it.
Hopefully the guy has crop insurance. Or the court rules to make the company pay to cut the trees down. Ideally also gets him some extra money to get a new crop going.
No, he’ll never farm again. All the fruit he would have grown for people, is gone forever, thanks to this scumbag company.
“This isn’t going to destroy me, but I’ll tell you this, I’m not going to farm anymore,” he said. “I can’t farm in an industry where a company can treat their growers this way and literally use the legal system to punish them.”
I mean, scumbag licensing terms, yeah, but also why did he agree to them?! It’s like someone advertising a free kick in the nuts, saying “sure, lemme get that”, and then calling them a scumbag for kicking you in the nuts.
…is just asking to get squeezed out.
Juiced, if you will.
And then in court, beaten to a pulp.
Orchid is a flower, orchard is the word you’re looking for.
Yeah man…
There’s now way autocorrect would have done that, clearly people don’t know which of these is which
There’s now way autocorrect would have done that
Bullshit. My autocorrect changes the most random ass shit sometimes, like I’ve had basic words like “if” get changed to “of” occasionally while I’m typing for seemingly no reason. I wouldn’t trust it enough in general to make a claim like that.
Thanks.
I was wondering why people were down voting me, it’s because I didn’t put /s
Usually sarcasm is relatively obvious but the number of grammar/typo nazis on fedi is still too damn high
Well, I’d like to say that my account being the same account who got corrected would have been enough to indicate that out of literally anyone, I am the one person that would know which word I meant to type…
And that’s why I could skip the “\s”
But here we are, I’m overestimating people and the \s is always required.
I mean, I wasn’t being shitty about it, it was misused twice, so I’m trying to be helpful. Just helping op to differentiate. If they’re swipe texting, it’s a slightly different movement, too.
There’s now way
*no way
Why you right escape clauses, requirements to purchase, minimum prices that are based on yearly market value, and say first right to purchase and not exclusive.
It amazes me how badly so many contracts are written. There are enough horror stories online that you almost shouldn’t need a business lawyer to help with the stipulations.
The problem is that these rich corporations and billionaires have so much money and power, it doesn’t matter if they get the perfect contract with all the clauses. They’ll break it, and if you go after them in court? They’ll destroy your life. They’ll hire the best lawyers, they’ll stretch the case out for years, and even if you win? You’ll never see a dime. And all the time that case is going on you’re not allowed to sell any fruit or make any money, and you’re just hand-wringing and driving yourself into an early grave with anxiety.
You cannot win in a court case against money like that. The rich can afford more justice than you can.
“This isn’t going to destroy me, but I’ll tell you this, I’m not going to farm anymore,” he said. “I can’t farm in an industry where a company can treat their growers this way and literally use the legal system to punish them.”
Locking distribution rates without guaranteed sale is just asking to get squeezed out.
vibe.
