The FAO Council at its 165th Session (30 November-4 December 2020) approved the recommendation made by the Committee on Agriculture (COAG) at its 27th session in Rome with regard to Saudi Arabia's proposal to declare 2027 the International Year of Date Palm. The recommendation is to be submitted for adoption by the United Nations General Assembly at its next session.
The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture said that this global achievement accomplished due to the continued efforts made by H.E. Minister Abdulrahman Abdulmohsen AlFadley, H.E. Vice Minister Mansour Hilal AlMushaiti and Deputy Minister for Agriculture Ahmed AlAiadh.
The ministry indicated that this huge step was taken after several meetings held and researches carried out by the ministry and FAO's officials on dates socio-economic importance for countries and societies. The plan of action to establish observance of the International Year of Date Palm in 2027 was approved at the request of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, during the COAG session held in September 2020. The proposal will be presented to the United Nations in New York for final approval.
The FAO Council recognized the observance of an International Year of Date Palm by the international community would contribute to raising awareness of the suitability for sustainable cultivation of date palm under adverse climatic conditions, due to the vast genetic diversity of dates and their adaptive capacities to a range of production environments and marketing demands. It also recognized date palms as an important source of income and the need to empower youth and women to develop agribusiness system that includes crop byproducts.
The Council stressed the urgent need to raise awareness of the economic benefits of dates, and the importance of sustainable farming and production practices to the livelihoods of millions of rural farm families and smallholder farmers, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. It also emphasized the need to make markets recognize dates' benefits and to foster efficient value chains embracing innovative mechanization, digitalization and post-harvest services.
According to the FAO statistics, the global date palm production covers an area of more than one million hectares, and the total production is about 8.5 million metric tons. Its cultivation expands to Asia (648.3 thousand ha), Africa (435.7 thousand ha), Europe (947 ha) and the Americas (7 022 ha), while Asia and Africa lead date producing regions accounting for respectively, 55.8 percent and 43.4 percent of the total world harvest.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is among the leading producers of dates, accounting for 17% of the global date production. It has over 31 million palm trees with annual production exceeding 1.5 million tons.
The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture is working closely with the National Center for Palms and Dates to facilitate export procedures and open sales outlets outside the Kingdom, so that Saudi dates can reach world markets, leading to an increase in the Saudi dates exports by 8.5% to SAR 549 million in the first half of 2020, which would contribute to achieving the Saudi Vision 2030 by raising the share of non-oil exports.
The Ministry aims to increase the exports of Saudi dates to meet 80% of the target to reach 200 thousand tons by the end of 2020, and to become the world's biggest exporter of dates in 2021 by increasing the dates exports by 12% per year to SAR 1.75 billion and 222 thousand tons.