Atlas Produce & Distribution Inc., located in Bakersfield, CA, is expecting its volume of California dates to be up about 20 percent this year, which includes a significant jump in its organic date volume.

Sales Manager Ben Antongiovanni said fresh dates have been in a growth cycle for the past five years, and the organic category is growing at even a faster clip.  

“This year we expect that about 30 percent of our production will be organic and 70 percent conventional. We have seen a lot of growth in the organic category.”

He reasoned that dates are an item with a good nutritional profile and tend to be consumed in a greater volume by health-conscience consumers. These are the same consumers that also eat organic food at a higher rate than other consumers.  

Antongiovanni noted that transitioning production from conventional to organic is not a difficult process, and Atlas is taking that route on much of its acreage. He explained that dates are grown in the top of a palm tree 20 feet off the ground. There is very little pest pressure at that height and dates are wrapped in a protective paper cone during their growth period, which further protects them against pests.   

For the most part, the Atlas executive said pesticides are not used on the crop.  “Conventional dates are almost organic,” he said.  “It’s pretty easy to transition the acreage.”

All of the Atlas Produce date acreage is in the Coachella Valley of California and the vast majority of its crop is the Medjool variety, which is the plump, large fresh date that is considered the top fresh variety. Atlas began harvesting the crop in late August, which is about one week ahead of the typical harvest time frame.  The company will get all of the fruit off the trees by the end of October and market it from cold storage throughout the rest of the year. Fresh dates are marketed 12 months of the year.

While it is a year-round crop and gaining acceptance at non-holiday periods, peak sales are still driven by the holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter are periods when date sales spike, as is the Muslim Ramadan celebration. Ramadan is a monthlong religious celebration in which adults fast from sunrise to sundown. Dates, with their rich Middle Eastern history, are often part of the fast-breaking meal and consumed by children all day long, as they are not required to fast. The month of Ramadan is a holiday that moves through the calendar and basically begins 10-14 days earlier every year.  It is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, which is a lunar calendar. In 2015, it began June 18 and ended July 16. In 2016, it will stretch from June 6 to July 5.

Antongiovanni said dates are seasonally priced and do tend to increase during the holiday periods. “However we give yearly pricing to many of our customers and honor that pricing level year round.”

There are only a handful of date shippers in California that control most of the production, but dates are subject to global competition as Israel is one of the larger producers. Atlas has robust export sales mostly to Europe and Australia.

He said the trickiest aspect to dates is the harvest as laborers do have to be 20 feet up in the sky to harvest the fruit. In fact, the entire growing process requires seven trips up the tree to perform various activities involved in producing dates. Climbing the tree was once in vogue and no doubt still is in many areas, though platforms hoisted up and around the top of the tree is the favored method in California.