Most of us who live in urban areas, when we go to the grocery store we do not think about how the fruits and vegetables arrived at the Supermarket, just thankful they did when we want to purchase what we want and need. Thanks to a lawsuit in California we have added material to consider.

In an article by Claire Rush of the Associated Press, there is farmer in Reedley located in the Central Valley of California that has a on going lawsuit against Giumarra Brothers Fruit Co. over a new nectarine called Monalise which has a sweeter taste than the normal nectarine.

Court filings show the farmer Mr. Mora signed a sublicensing agreement with Giumarra in 2017 to grow the Monalise. The farmer required him for the fruit to be packed and sold through Giumarra. Under the agreements, the farmer was to pay Giumarra a royalty of $2.50 a tree and a 4% production royalty based off the gross sales of the fruit the trees produced.

The farmer alleges in 2022, the company sold the nectarines to Taiwan in violation of the contract which states Giumarra would only sell the nectarines in the US and Canada.

The farmer did not like Giumarra and sold his fruit to another packer, which Giumarra sued him for breach of contract.

Giumarra says all rights to the Monalise variety are owned by Star Fruits Diffusion, a French company that works with plant breeding programs, while Giumarra holds to right to sublicense the variety for testing, production and sale.

In the meantime, the farmer would rather give away the fruit from the nectarines rather than sell it to Giumarra, which is why it made the news.

Plant breeders, including universities, have long experimented with new crop varieties. For example Washington State University developed the Rainer cherry in the 1950’s. The University of Minnesota released the Honeycrisp apple in the 1990s. Both varieties are now in the public domain and can be grown and sold by anyone.

Bradley Rickard, professor of food and agricultural economics at Cornell University, said fruit patents are becoming increasingly common. A patent allows a breeder to collect a royalty from the trees it sells, the fruit that the trees produce or both. In 2010, the University of Minnesota was sued about the Sweet Tango apple and won.

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