Peach farmers paid to cut down trees

California farmers grow about 85 percent of the peaches that end up in a can in the United States, but demand has been falling as consumers buy more fresh fruit and cheaper imports from places such as Greece and China cut into the state’s share of the market.

The glut has led the US Department of Agriculture to offer $7 million to California growers who agree to cut their trees and promise not to plant peaches for the next 10 years. About a quarter of the state’s canning peach farmers applied for the government’s offer of up to $1,700 per acre of trees destroyed.

It’s not the first time farmers have been offered money to tear out their peach trees. The California Canning Peach Association paid growers to cut down orchards four times over the past 20 years. But the effort failed when other farmers planted more orchards. There are more acres devoted to the fruit now than there have been in a decade, according to the association. (AP)