An Inherited Yuba City Peach Orchard Still Carries the Agreements Del Monte's Exit Left Behind

"Without it, we were looking at abandoned orchards and generational farming operations coming to an end." Ranjit Davit, a Sutter County peach grower who chairs the California Canning Peach Association board, said that in May about the federal money set aside to pull cling peach trees after Del Monte Foods closed its Modesto cannery and its grower contracts were voided, as The Daily Democrat reported.

Some of those orchards belong to estates and trusts. In those cases the person deciding what happens to the trees may be an executor who has never farmed, working from another state, with a court timeline running. The Del Monte contract is gone. The rules that came after it are tied to ownership and to the land itself, and the order in which an estate handles them affects what it receives and what a buyer takes on.

The Removal Money Followed the Owner, Not the Ground

The program is the Clingstone Peach Diversion Program. USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service runs it together with the California Canning Peach Association. AMS put in up to $9 million and the association pledged another $1.5 million. Together they pay growers $175 per verifiable ton from the 2025 crop, with a minimum of $1,500 and a maximum of $4,000 per acre.

The most important rule for a probate or trust sale sits in the Federal Register text that created the program. Only people who currently own the land and have not contracted to sell it could take part. Participants also had to confirm they had made no prior arrangement to sell the land, or to pull the trees and keep the land for commercial uses such as housing developments or shopping centers.

An estate that had already accepted a purchase offer on an orchard parcel could not enroll it. An estate that had not yet listed could. The calendar left little room to choose:

The application window closed a month ago. An estate that enrolled now has a deadline: trees out within 60 days of the approval notice, and the removal form certified and filed with CCPA by December 31. If a sale is planned, that work has to fit inside the court or trust schedule.

The rule also covers a grower who has died. When an eligible grower dies, becomes incompetent, disappears, or dissolves, anyone eligible under 7 CFR part 707 may receive the benefits the grower would have received, as AMS decides. CCPA's application instructions let a non-grower applicant state a representative role, such as executor. We could not confirm from the rule or the forms whether a trust is an eligible applicant. A successor trustee should get that answer in writing from CCPA or AMS.

The Ten-Year Promise Stays After the Trees Are Gone

Taking the money comes with a commitment. Each participating grower agrees that cling peaches will not be replanted on that land for 10 years after removal. The rule says this binds everyone, not only the participant. If an estate pulls a block this fall and sells the parcel next spring, the buyer takes ground where cling peaches cannot go back in until 2036.

For most buyers that hardly matters, because cling peaches have lost their market. Del Monte contracted about 35% of California's cling peaches in 2025, and Pacific Coast Producers, the grower-owned cooperative in Lodi, contracted about 60%. Still, the restriction should be disclosed and documented, not discovered in escrow. The program also requires records and invoices to be kept for ten years after payment, and USDA, CCPA, and the Government Accountability Office can inspect them. Those records belong in the file the estate hands over at closing. Before distribution, keep in mind that everyone who signs a payment application as having an interest in the payment is jointly and severally liable for any refund AMS later decides is owed.

An estate that did not enroll faces a different question. The eCFR rule excluded abandoned orchards, dead trees, and orchards without a processor contract for the 2025 crop. Standing peach trees with no buyer for the fruit now carry a removal cost. The Sacramento Bee reported that Yuba City grower Hardeep Bains spent $8,500 to pull his 30-acre clingstone orchard and another $9,600 to rip the soil, and then about $42,000 on almond nursery stock. The same reporting found that some former Del Monte growers left their orchards standing in the hope that Pacific Coast Producers would offer contracts the following year. A fiduciary can wait in the same way, but the trees keep needing care while the estate waits.

The Older Agreement Changed Last December

Many orchard parcels in Sutter County also have a Williamson Act contract, and that agreement stays with the property through death and sale. The state Department of Conservation says these contracts bind later owners and remain in place until non-renewal or cancellation. The land must stay in agricultural or compatible open-space use, and it is taxed on that use instead of full market value.

On December 16, 2025, the Sutter County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to adopt Resolution No. 25-049. It cut Williamson Act contract terms from ten years to nine for calendar year 2026 and reduced the related tax benefit. The county had received no state subvention funding in fiscal year 2024–2025. Under the resolution, contracted parcels get an addition to assessed value equal to 10% of the gap between the restricted valuation and the standard valuation. Owners who filed a notice of non-renewal by April 1, 2026 avoided that addition. Another paragraph of the draft resolution gives February 1, 2026 as the filing deadline instead, so the recorded version is the one to check.

The Board also told county staff to record a notice listing the affected parcel numbers and owners' names, and to change the FY 2025–26 tax bills to match. That recorded notice will appear on title. A preliminary report on an inherited orchard may therefore show the original contract, the 2025 county notice, and possibly a supplemental tax item. All three should be explained to beneficiaries before a buyer's lender asks about them. We found no similar resolution for 2027 in county records through the Board's September 29, 2026 agenda.

Sutter County is not accepting new Williamson Act applications. It still processes amendments, non-renewals, and cancellations of existing contracts. There are two ways out, and they cost very different amounts:

• Non-renewal starts a gradual exit, and the contract stays in force throughout. Sutter County charges $600 to file for an entire contract and $2,000 for part of one. A partial non-renewal is not recorded until the Board of Supervisors approves it.
• Cancellation requires a petition, public notice and a hearing, a valuation by the assessor, and specific findings by the Board. The fee is 12.5% of the unrestricted cancellation valuation for a standard contract and 25% for a Farmland Security Zone contract.
• Lot-line adjustments on contracted land cost $500. They need Board findings, and each resulting parcel must meet the county's 20- or 80-acre General Plan minimum.

Heirs sometimes hope to split off the house and sell the orchard on its own. We found nothing in Sutter County's published materials that grants a general right to create a new homesite on contracted land. Each parcel's contract, zoning, and recorded easements decide that.

Pricing Ground That Has No Processor

Crop values are easy to find, but they are not land values. Sutter County's 2025 crop report, with a commissioner's letter dated August 2026, lists clingstone peaches at $65.448 million on 7,840 bearing acres and almonds at $68.182 million on 23,100 bearing acres. The report itself says gross values do not reflect grower profit. We did not find a recent series of orchard land sales in Sutter County. An honest valuation of an inherited orchard therefore starts with the parcel: water, soil, what stands on it, and what is recorded against it.

The direction of the market is visible. The Appeal-Democrat put about 2,019 Sutter County acres at risk from the lost processor. Growers who are replanting are choosing Yorizane, a self-pollinating almond variety that needs less labor, even though California's total almond acreage has fallen for four straight years. Yuba-Sutter growers generally have better water access than many Central Valley growers because nearby rivers are fed each year by rain and snowmelt. For a buyer planning almonds, cleared ground with that water access, a known Williamson Act status, and documented removal records is a simpler purchase than a block of peach trees with no buyer for the fruit.

For an executor or trustee, the useful file before listing includes these documents:

1. The recorded Williamson Act contract, any non-renewal history, and the 2025 Resolution 25-049 notice for the parcel's APN
2. The current tax bill, showing any supplemental assessment
3. Any CCPA approval notice, removal certification, and the December 31 claim status
4. Removal contractor invoices, kept for the program's ten-year retention period
5. The final Del Monte contract and the 2025 delivery records, which show the orchard's eligibility history

If you are the executor, trustee, or attorney on a Sutter County orchard estate and some of these documents are missing, Cooper Realty can help you collect them, look over title and the county record with you, and plan the sale around the CCPA deadline and the Williamson Act contract on the parcel. Book a Free Consultation and we will start with the parcel number.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.