Apple's Tree Buying Spree for Apple Park Causing Shortages

[tennisproha]

Miss the point much? The trees are not exotic, they are fruit trees. Growing fruit trees is farming. Whether the maintenance and harvesting is contracted out or not (which many farmer and ranch owners do), it is still agriculture.

Speaking of around here, around here we are under serious pest and disease threat. The county comes in every few months now and sprays all of our backyard fruit trees. We have only a few of them. Apple will be growing thousands of them. Get it yet?

Not to kill your high or anything, but apples already into farming.

Cheers!

 

[MRxROBOT]

Yes. Yes they are.

Yes. Yes that's right.

 

[6foot5foot]

The good thing about trees is that they grow on trees.

 

[Kajje]

I wonder how all these fruit trees will be maintained. This is basically farming, not one of Apple's main businesses thus far.

Running a business with a lot of employees is not only about core business.
With 14,000 employees - on the new campus alone - even the toilet paper turnover will be more than a medium sized supermarket.

Less than 1 tree per employee. Doesn't look that big of an issue to handle.

Whatever comes out of it, the area is much better off now compared to the state it was before ground breaking. Green is always nicer than asphalt.

 

[atmenterprises]

And fairly pointless if you insist on missing the point, which clearly you intended to do forever. Sorry if it's too complicated, but you are the one who is making it that way.

If everyone is missing the point, it's you who's being obtuse and not a sign of a lack of comprehension on the part of your audience.

 

[Dranix]

Fruit trees have special maintenance needs. They are subject to pest infestations that need to be controlled, the fruit has to be harvested on a schedule. The people who know how to do that kind of stuff are called farmers. Whether they contract it out or handle it in house, Apple is getting into the farming business.

Honest - Are Americans so dependent on specialists that they can't care for a simple fruit tree? People here in Germany have lots of fruit trees in their garden and no one needs a farmer to get the fruits und care for the trees x_X

 

[Sill]

Less than 1 tree per employee. Doesn't look that big of an issue to handle.

Honest - Are Americans so dependent on specialists that they can't care for a simple fruit tree?

Reading those two quotes, the solution suddenly appeared to me...

We don't have to worry about Apple having to learn how to farm: On opening day, all employees at Apple Park are required to "adopt" a tree and care for it.

Anyone who wants to secure their career at the company can take arbor/agricultural classes in their personal time. Since there will be fewer trees than employees, Apple should make sure only the least essential employees won't have a tree to care for. If the economy turns south, they'll be the first ones to go. If someone above them leaves, the tree could be given into the newer employee's care. That should also make them work harder to stick around and "earn their tree".

Of course this might lead to all sorts of interesting workplace drama. I could see people bringing their own trees in and planting them during the off hours - maybe throwing some money at disreputable security folks to allow that to happen - and hacking their name into the arbor lists to make it seem like they had a tree the whole time. Or even worse, they take over someone else's tree and wipe their name off the books. More evil employees might decide to poison or even steal a tree under someone else's care. People will end up sleeping under their tree during non-work hours, which will of course raise productivity as no one will need to commute, and its obvious the fertilizer problem will be solved by that as well.

Eventually Apple will have to divert some people from other jobs - perhaps the watch band design team - and make them audit the trees/ tree lists, perhaps bring in employees for questioning:

"No! I swear it was always my tree! Ashok is lying!"
"YOU lie, Hamid! You don't even like avocados!"
"You're both going home unless we get a straight answer. You do want to be truthful don't you? You don't want us to resort to... more... serious measures, do you?"
"No Eddy, not that!"
"Please Eddy, don't send Bob Mansfield after us!!"
"Bob? Would you come in here please?"
"ArrrrrrgggggghhhH!"

 

[swarmster]

8,000 cars leaving at 5pm & starting up in an underground parking lot. Holy cow I hope there's good ventilation down there!

I'm sure the ventilation is capable, but I suspect it's likely that half the cars in Apple's parking lots are hybrid or electric.

 

[Kajje]

The post 2 steps up proves inhaling toxic fumes can cause strange brain spins.

 

[cdcastillo]

Trees are great. All I can see out my back windows are thousands of trees, and any time I work from home I sit facing out the window so I can look at the trees and it re-energizes me... When we moved offices our team was put in the basement and it really took a big toll on me—both productivity wise, and emotionally by not getting any daylight or fresh air...

I feel like the center of this campus will be marvelous place to relax in midday in the summer. Sun, shade, fresh air.

In several papers now, the daily (or if not, at least frequent) contact with nature (grass, trees, etc.) has been linked to reduced mortality, stress, and incidence of dementia. The point being, you are not imagining the benefits on your health and work productivity.

Paper 1, Paper 2, Paper 3.

 

[mrxak]

Honest - Are Americans so dependent on specialists that they can't care for a simple fruit tree? People here in Germany have lots of fruit trees in their garden and no one needs a farmer to get the fruits und care for the trees x_X

No, we're not, and I grew up with many fruit trees in our backyard and it was no big deal (though, as it happened, my father was an arborist, so maybe I'm not the best example). A large business is going to contract that work out if they've got thousands of trees as part of their landscaping, of course. Obviously the engineers aren't going to be going out at the end of their workday to maintain the orchards. IJ Reilly is making a bigger deal out of this for reasons well beyond anyone's understanding. Whatever landscaping company they hire will have no problems handling the fruit and dealing with pest regulations.

 

[macduke]

In several papers now, the daily (or if not, at least frequent) contact with nature (grass, trees, etc.) has been linked to reduced mortality, stress, and incidence of dementia. The point being, you are not imagining the benefits on your health and work productivity.

Paper 1, Paper 2, Paper 3.

Yeah, I think it might be a key for my grandparents staying so active and seeming younger than everyone else I know approaching 80. They've lived in the same house in the woods for over 40 years and are surrounded by so many trees. It's hard to get land like that nowadays, but the forest behind my house was a big factor when it came time to decide on which one to purchase. My grandparents also spend about four months out of the year on the beach in Florida. They regularly take walks, they read and do puzzles a lot on the iPad, my grandpa edits movies on the MacBook, and they spend a lot of time outside in the woods or walking on the beach or taking photos.

It was hard when we first moved in last summer because my wife gave birth the following month, but we've been slowly changing our habits to be more like them. I've used them as a guide over the years on how to manage finances and it has paid off immensely. I feel like an idiot for not seeing how valuable these other lessons are. My grandpa still works in the yard a lot hauling brush and my grandma works out every evening. All these things are important for longevity. I live in a nicer neighborhood now where nearly everyone has a lawn service, but I'm still out there with my push mower and weed eater going to town, and I've been slowly clearing some brush and downed tree trunks in the forested part of my yard so I can build a relaxation area. I'm thinking hammock, a firepit with seating around it, and a maybe few shadow box fencing bits around it to create some wind breaks with maybe some overhead connecting bits to help keep the rain away. Still need to mock something up.

A lot of people in my family (aside from my grandparents I spoke about) are medicated for issues involving depression, anxiety, high stress, etc. I had a lot of those issues when I was younger and around them more. I chalk up a lot of my emotional health to being outside a lot, taking a job that is less stressful and time consuming—even though it pays less, and living within our means on a reasonable budget where we save up for things we want and don't take out loans aside from our mortgage.

 

[Sill]

The post 2 steps up proves inhaling toxic fumes can cause strange brain spins.

I know, right? Thats what happens with too much time spent in the city, and not enough time in the country.

 

[Glen Raphael]

around here we are under serious pest and disease threat. The county comes in every few months now and sprays all of our backyard fruit trees. We have only a few of them. Apple will be growing thousands of them. Get it yet?

"thousands of trees, including fruit trees" does not mean "thousands of fruit trees". Apple plans to grow 600 fruit trees.

Toward that end, Apple hired an arborist who leads a team managing the planting/moving/replanting project; presumably similar expertise will be used to maintain the merely hundreds of fruit trees, which will mainly be located in small orchards within the central courtyard.

 

[Chair-Sama]

Fruit trees have special maintenance needs. They are subject to pest infestations that need to be controlled, the fruit has to be harvested on a schedule. The people who know how to do that kind of stuff are called farmers. Whether they contract it out or handle it in house, Apple is getting into the farming business.

this is far from true.

the building I'm currently working in here in arizona, is almost completely surrounded by various citrus trees, ranging from oranges, to grapefruits, to lemons, and so forth.
we have a company we contract who comes by weekly for general maintenance and then more often when the fruit is ready to be harvested.
but i would hardly call us here at the call center "farmers"

fruit trees are not that hard to maintain if your goal is NOT to sell the fruit. sure if you want the best, freshest and most beautiful apples or oranges, you need to be on top of it 100%. but if its more for decorative purposes, and not your lively hood, general maintenance is usually fine. and there are MANY companies both here and in CA that specialize in just this.

if anything having fruit trees to harvest can sometimes reduce the cost of the landscaping itself as a lot of local businesses will harvest the fruit and then sell it for a small profit.
IE: the company we have here, will harvest the fruit from various properties around the city, that they maintain, in return they charge a much lower fee during the time, or sometimes even offer to do the harvesting/general maintenance and landscaping that time of the year for free, and will then sell the good fruits harvested to local farmers markets and such.

sure, those who work at that company might be considered "farmers" but again, our company would hardly been considered a "farm"

its not a billion dollar industry but deffinetly not expensive for a company like apple to figure it all out.

**as a side note, might as well grab myself some overalls and a straw hat, as considering i have a modestly sized orange tree in my back yard(left over from the previous owners/builders of the house) and considering i go out and water the thing a few times a week, by your definition i am a true farmer i guess.

 

[ryanwarsaw]

Miss the point much? The trees are not exotic, they are fruit trees. Growing fruit trees is farming. Whether the maintenance and harvesting is contracted out or not (which many farmer and ranch owners do), it is still agriculture.

Speaking of around here, around here we are under serious pest and disease threat. The county comes in every few months now and sprays all of our backyard fruit trees. We have only a few of them. Apple will be growing thousands of them. Get it yet?

I don't think anybody will panic if they miss a harvest.

Thousands of them, and they aren't maintained by "gardeners" because they are agricultural trees and agriculture is regulated by the state and counties. Every county in California has an Agricultural Commissioner who is responsible for preventing infestations from spreading from one orchard to another. This is required by state law and has been for well over 100 years, but since you are so knowledgable on this subject no doubt you knew this already, but still think it's funny.

Currently the state is dealing with a potential killer infestation of a disease of citrus crops called HLB carried by an insect called the Asian citrus psyllid that has already wiped out much of the citrus crop in Florida. The insect is already in California, though the disease has not found a foothold here yet. This is why every fruit tree in several counties has to be inspected and sprayed regularly. It is a huge cost to growers but not half as much as losing all of their trees, which is the only real alternative. Nobody is allowed to take this problem lightly.

This is only one example of the many agricultural diseases and pests that are common or episodic in California fruit trees. If you have any of these trees, you have to deal with it. If you have a lot of trees, you have to deal with it a lot. You can ask anyone who grows fruit for a living whether this is a trivial problem to be addressed by "gardeners."
[doublepost=1492146210][/doublepost]

Well, you can repeat that endlessly, but you will be wrong, endlessly. You are welcome to verify anything I've said. Perhaps you ought to give that a try before responding again.

Some may die. That happens sometimes. They will look at it and simply replace them with what proves to be successful for that site. I assume they will use undocumented workers from nearby sanctuary cities to do all the dirty work same as everybody else does.

 

[Rocketman]

I read in one of the early discussions of the orchards that the intent is to provide fruit for the cafes and group discussion tables. I hope they have plenty of trash cans too.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I read in one of the early discussions of the orchards that the intent is to provide fruit for the cafes and group discussion tables. I hope they have plenty of trash cans too.

Close to 900 fruit trees can produce a lot of fruit all at once, especially if they are determinate varieties.