Though they had a lot of cards stacked against them during the past 18 months because of the coronavirus, the California date industry reports a pretty good year and a strong indication that the 2021-22 season will be even better.

You would be hard pressed to find an agricultural crop with more inherent challenges when operating under the pandemic conditions that it has faced since March of 2020 than dates — both fresh and processed. California primarily produces the Medjool date, which is mostly sold as a fresh offering in retail produce departments, and the Deglet Nour, which is touted for its use as an ingredient in many baked products, most notably the healthy snack bars that populate a wide swath of an aisle in most grocery stores.

The fresh date is an impulse item that often relies on merchandising and sampling for increased sales. Retail sampling of product has been banned from most markets for basically the entire 18 months as it is just now coming back. Those popular healthy snack bars are most often consumed on-the-go by students in their lunches or adults on the way to work. With schools and office mostly closed, the snack bar registered a steep decline and consequently manufacturers bought far fewer ingredients for those bars and other date-ladened products.

Add to those challenges, the fact that more than 50 percent of the date crop is exported. Again, during the pandemic this was a difficult proposition as steamship lines across the world reported huge logistical problems. Export trade across the world took a hit with many countries making it very difficult for exports to come into their ports.

Nonetheless, California date sales did pretty well over that time period with grower-shippers expecting a big boost this year.

Hope Barbee of Double Date Packing Co., in Coachella, CA, said the 2020-21 crop was smaller than usual, which turned out to be advantageous. Speaking to The Produce News on August 30, she said the harvest of new Medjool crop would start during the first couple weeks of September and she said the trees looked to be carrying a heavy load. Just as the smaller crop last year was a blessing, Barbee said a big crop in 2021-22 is a welcome sight.

D.J. Ryan of SunDate, also in Coachella, concurred. Speaking on the first day of September, he said that harvesting on the first date groves had begun with preliminary but promising results. “It sure looks like a good crop,” he said. “The size (of the fruit) is where we want it to be. We will be into the heavy harvest period next week (Sept. 6-12). Once that happens, then fruit will come in rapidly where it is graded and put away (for a few weeks). Then we will know for sure how good the crop will be.”

The Medjool variety will be harvested until about the end of October with the Deglet Nour dates picked during the last two months of the year.

Picking those dates is still a sight to behold. Though for safety reasons, packers often use automated “cherry pickers” with platforms to perform the many hand tasks needed in the life of a date (from pollination to thinning to picking), there are still many traditional pickers in the Coachella Valley that climb the trees the old-fashioned way and perform the cultural tasks 50-75 feet above ground as they cling to the tree. “Of course, even those traditional pickers now use safety harnesses, but those guys are still amazing,” said Ryan. “We are proud that we can still generate these jobs in the (Coachella) valley.  It is a tradition, and the workers are well-compensated.”

Speaking of this year’s crop, Ryan expects the price structure to remain about the same as last year. He said the sales price on dates is very steady from year to year. “It is as close to hardware as you can find in produce,” he quipped.

He did add that costs all along the supply chain continue to increase so at some point a price adjustment will be necessary.

Though dates are often considered a specialty item, they have the longest history of any item sold in a supermarket. Archeological finds have shown that date palm trees were around millions of years ago. The fruit of the date palm has been cultivated for about 6,000 years in the Middle East.

It remains a staple of Ramadan, a month-long period of fasting and prayer observed by Muslims worldwide. The date is a traditional food used to break the day-long fast each evening. During the month of Ramadan, which is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and occurs on a floating basis during spring in the United States, date sales peak. For this upcoming season, Ramadan will be observed from April 2 to May 2.

Ryan said the date is popular for Ramadan as well as for Easter and Passover and during the traditional winter holidays in the United States of Thanksgiving and Christmas. But he said dates have become a year-round staple with good demand all 12 months of the year.