Coachella harvest refills date supply as sector recovers

By Caleb Hampton 

Fresh California dates are hitting shelves again this month after some suppliers ran short following a crop disaster last year.

Farms in the Coachella Valley, where most U.S.-produced dates are grown, began harvesting Medjool dates within the past couple weeks, with other varieties harvested from July through November.

Dates are typically held in cold storage and sold as fresh fruit year-round, with the carryover from one harvest lasting until the next begins. But last August, Tropical Storm Hilary devastated the Riverside County crop, causing some producers to deplete their supply months ago.

“It put a lot of people out of dates by May of this past year, or even earlier,” said John Ortiz, wholesale manager for Jewel Date Co. in Thermal. “We were completely out.”

Albert Keck, president of Hadley Date Gardens in Thermal, estimated Hilary ruined half his crop.

“This past year was exceptionally difficult,” he said, adding that his company, one of California’s major growers and shippers, was also out of stock going into this year’s harvest.

Originally planted in the Coachella Valley with seeds from North Africa and the Middle East, dates thrive in arid climates and are vulnerable to moisture. Rain during harvest can cause mold and fermentation.

“It just ruins the fruit,” said Candelario Felix Jr., owner of Candy’s Dates in Thermal, who lost three-quarters of last year’s crop.

From 2021 to 2023, California’s date production dropped from 53,200 tons to 35,300 tons, with its total value plummeting from $161 million to $92 million, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

This year, growers in the region are hoping to rebound with a strong harvest.

“We should have a beautiful crop,” said Mark Tadros, owner of Aziz Farms in Thermal, which began harvesting Barhi dates, a hard yellow variety, in July. The farm started Medjool harvest last week.

Barring any ill-timed storms, “this will be one of the better quality crops in a long time,” Keck of Hadley Date Gardens said.

Each spring, farmers pollinate date palms by hand, collecting pollen from male trees and using it to pollinate female flower clusters. Before harvest, they thin the clusters and place cloth or nylon bags over them to protect the fruit from birds and insects. When the fruit is ready, workers hand-pick the dates from trees that can grow up to 75 feet tall, often doing so at night under floodlights to avoid the daytime heat.

“It’s a challenge,” said Leticia Torres, owner of Mirage Date Gardens. About a dozen members of her family operate their 5-acre farm in Coachella. “We harvest it, sort it and pack it for the market,” Torres said.

All of the hand labor makes growing dates expensive, and California producers have struggled to compete with imports from countries such as Mexico, Tunisia and Algeria.

“We’re competing globally with local expenses,” Keck said, mentioning the higher costs for labor, fuel and materials, as well as environmental and food safety regulations. “It’s been really tough.”

He added, “We actually agree with these values: I want my workers to prosper, and I want to take care of the environment. The culture in the market promotes all those values, but it’s frustrating that it doesn’t like to pay for them.”

After months of short supplies, date shippers said they were eager to get the new crop to market.

“People are anxious to get their hands on the fruit, and the hope is that they’ll stay anxious throughout the season,” said Tadros, who sells primarily to specialty wholesalers and retailers that cater to Middle Eastern consumers across the U.S.

Growers said they were anxious, too, to find out whether their fruit’s absence on the market had cost them buyers.

“I’m worried the disruption in supply is going to convert some market share to imports,” Keck said. “Hopefully, our customers wait it out.”

Despite the sector’s challenges, California’s planted date acreage increased from 8,200 in 2013 to 12,000 in 2022.

During that time, dates have seen increased demand from U.S. consumers, driven by the adoption of date paste as a base for energy bars and by greater awareness of the fruit’s nutritional benefits.

“Dates are growing in popularity,” said Kristy Kneiding, manager of the California Date Commission, adding that the fruit has gained recognition among athletes and health-conscious consumers as a “superfood.”

Dates contain fiber, vitamins and antioxidants, and despite being naturally sweet, they rank low on the glycemic index, meaning they do not spike blood sugar levels. The fruit has a long shelf life in or out of cold storage and can act as a binding agent in manufactured foods.

Within the past decade, companies such as Clif Bar and RX Bar took note of these traits and began using processed dates as a primary ingredient in their bars. California growers saw a surge in demand, but it didn’t last.

When the bar companies first came in, Jewel Date Co. shipped 2.5 million pounds of date paste in a year, Ortiz said. But he said the companies quickly shifted to cheaper imports. Now, the Thermal-based grower-shipper sells less than 200,000 pounds of paste a year.

“The demand for that product shot up, but then the imports came in and sucked it up,” Ortiz said.

Data on U.S. date imports “show a stable growth upwards outpacing domestic sales,” the California Date Commission said last year in a market report, adding that “imports are becoming favored by large food manufacturers.”

Most dates are still packed and sold as whole fruit.

With California dates hard to come by in recent months, Coachella Valley growers said strong demand has enabled them to raise prices a little on mail orders, at farmers markets and in other direct-to-consumer channels, which comprise a small portion of sales. The prices packers pay growers were about the same as in recent years, growers said, as were those paid by major retailers and distributors that agree contracts with packers in advance.

At Aziz Farms, Tadros said last week he was gearing up for a busy few months as the farm aims to pack and ship most of its crop before price pressure intensifies during the month of Ramadan, when imports saturate the market, and in the weeks after when boxes of dates continue to line pantries.

“Gifting dates is a big part of Ramadan,” Tadros said. “After the holiday, the market slows.”

With the lunar month shifting earlier each year, beginning next year in late February or early March, Tadros said, “the challenge is going to be making sure we can pack and ship fast enough.”

(Caleb Hampton is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at champton@cfbf.com.)