The California Date Administrative Committee, a federal marketing order covering date growers in Riverside County (encompassing the date-growing regions of the Coachella Valley) will be participating in several high-profile local events in the Coachella Valley in 2014, concentrated in the months of January and February.

“We have renewed our sponsorship this year with the Palm Springs Film Festival, the Humana Challenge which was formerly the Bob Hope Golf Tournament, and an American Heart Association reception kicking off the Go Red for Women Campaign, all in January, according to Lorrie Cooper, manager of the CDAC and the California Date Commission in Indio, CA. Chef Oliver WolfThat will be followed by the annual Riverside County Fair and National Date Festival in Indio in February.

The Palm Springs Film Festival is scheduled for Jan. 2-13, the Humana Challenge is Jan. 13-19, and the Date Festival is Feb. 14-23.

Last year, for the Palm Springs Film Festival, “we sponsored one of the evening events at the Renaissance Palm Springs Hotel,” Cooper said. “We have communication with the chef there, so we were able to put together a nice display of appetizers with dates in them.” The people attending the event were mostly people associated with the film industry and people who write about the film industry, “and they all got to taste these various types of date appetizers.”

The date committee also participated with the Bank of America at two different private viewings during the film festival for BofA’s high-end clients. “We helped provide them a date product that went into the table display of assorted foods that would be available” for the invited guests, Cooper said.

This year, “we are going to do it [the film festival] again, and we are going to kick it up a notch,” she said. The committee may “do a private sponsorship with just movie producers and actors and actresses” who attend the festival.

“For the Humana Challenge, what we did in January 2013” was to donate around 300 beautifully-designed gift boxes, with four Medjool dates, two Deglets and two date coconut rolls in each box, to be put in the goodie bags for the amateur and professional golfers participating in the tournament, she said.

In addition, “we worked with a chef who did all of the catering for the golf event, and we donated dates to him and worked with recipes including dates.” So golfers attending the event had many opportunities to taste dishes with dates.

While the date committee will continue to participate in the Humana Challenge, for January 2014 “we are going to change it a little bit,” Cooper said. “We are still going to be providing dates to the catering company that will be providing recipes for the entire event,” as well as providing the gift boxes for the contestants, “but we are also going to be working with one of the country clubs that will be hosting a private wives luncheon for the golfers.”

In both events, “instead of having an exhibit display and handing out dates to the public, we are attempting to get dates on the menus of those events so that the golfers and the film makers can taste the recipes with the dates,” she said.

At the American Heart Association event, for the last two years, “we partnered with the J.W., Marriott Desert Springs,” working with Marriott’s Chef Oliver Wolf, at an event kicking off AHA’s Go Red for Women campaign, she said. “Chef Oliver did a fantastic job” with the food display, including dates in various menu items. “We had about 200 people attend this event, pretty much their top donor list.

The date committee also partnered with AHA in a Go Red for Women luncheon.

“We are going to do the same thing in January 2004, at the same location, with Chef Oliver,” she said. “He is a wonderful chef, and he enjoys what he does.”

At the 2014 Date Festival, the date committee will again be “rounding up professional chefs who will be giving chef demonstrations on how they use dates,” Cooper said.

“Our growers want us to get into these events,” which are in their local area, she said. The event organizers have all “accepted us very well. They are happy to have us.”

Meanwhile, the 2013 California date harvest was under way. Growers “are picking Medjools right now,” Cooper said Sept. 5. Deglet Noors will probably start around the second week of October.

“We did have some rain,” she said. “The Medjools got through the rain OK,” but growers were evaluating possible damage to the Deglets, which could increase the percentage of the crop going to product grade. While the damage is expected to be “very minimal, maybe less than 10 percent,” she said. “right now it is just a wait and see on what the Deglet crop is going to look like.”

Even with the rain, growers are anticipating “a higher crop volume this year” compared to last year, she said.

Earlier estimates were for a 35 million pound crop, and “there is a possibility that it could run higher.”