California farmers must destroy 420,000 peach trees after Del Monte closes its canneries and cancels more than $550 million in long-term contracts

An almond farmer inspects a fruit on a tree. (Credit: Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle—Getty Images)

For many warm weather fruit lovers, the prospect of unlimited ripe and rosy peaches is mouth-watering. For Central California farmers, it’s more of a waking nightmare.

To make ends meet, these farmers are now weighing whether to destroy about 3,000 acres, or about 420,000 clingstone peach trees, following the closure of Del Monte Foods canneries earlier this year. With the shuttering of the Modesto Del Monte plant, which processed between 30% and 35% of the state’s cling peaches, the peach farmers are now left with a glut of fruit—and no one to sell it to. Now farmers are left with little choice but to uproot these trees and pivot to different crops to recoup losses.