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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 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.
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.
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.
Likely a clash of cultures. Farming traditionally has a reputation aspect. They often rely on each other to deal with problems quickly. A handshake deal "of course we will buy your full crop" is almost sacrosanct between farmers. To a big company however, the contract is all. If it's not in the contract it never has any meaning.
Unfortunately, the law is geared to the contract. Also, companies are expected to do their own due diligence. They can put whatever terms they want in a contract. Consumer protection is intended for when consumers can't get every contract read through by a lawyer. It just doesn't apply to business-to-business deals.
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.
There are tons of products that end up destroyed simply due to accounting practices. As a business, you can't just keep product around in the hope that you sell it next year, even if it's completely non-perishable. You are required to write it off as a loss and get rid of it. If no other business is willing to buy your unsold stock at a bulk discount, then it goes in the dumpster.
I dont think you understand whats happening at all. I got some awesome fruit from all this. And the article goes into much more detail than what your laying out.
Also this is an article written without the original articles...theres much more nuance within the Fresno Bee that they cite. People are making huge assumptions it seems...
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 :(
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.
Juiced, if you will.
And then in court, beaten to a pulp.
Orchid is a flower, orchard is the word you're looking for.
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.
This is fair and I withdraw my former outrage.
Still tho.
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.
vibe.
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.