Male papaya trees produce the pollen that fertilizes the female flowers. Without this pollen, female trees will have poor fruit set or produce fewer fruits. So the male trees are not totally useless. However, too many male trees will reduce the productivity of the farm because they will occupy the space that should be used by fruiting trees. For this reason, we retain only about 1 male tree for every 30–50 female trees. So we cut down some of them and leave the rest to serve the females.