RIYADH, 16 July — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd has issued instructions to purchase 21,000 tons of dates from local farmers at a total cost of SR74.12 million. The Kingdom will distribute the dates among the poor in many countries directly and through the UN’s World Food Program, Dr. Abdullah Muammar, minister of agriculture and water, said here yesterday.
He said Saudi Arabia, with an annual yield of 648,000 tons from a total of 18 million date palms, had emerged as one of the largest producers of dates in the world. Saudi Arabia has 400 varieties of dates, 60 of them in great demand around the world.
Referring to the date procurement program, Dr. Muammar said this reflected the government’s keenness to support the agricultural sector and to ensure the wellbeing of date farmers.
The ministry has been encouraging production of dates, especially after restrictions were imposed on cultivation of water-consuming crops in the face of depleting water resources. It has imposed a ban on wheat exports as well. Consequently, the production of wheat and barley went down from about six million tons in 1992 to two million tons in 1996.
Referring to the Kingdom’s cooperation with WFP, Muammar said a substantial quantity of dates would be made available to the UN agency. The WFP, in turn, will distribute them among the needy people in various countries.
Even though the government offers a subsidy of SR50 for each palm seedling planted and SR250 for each ton of yield, date farming do not attract major investors because of slow returns.
Unlike other major producers such as Tunisia, Israel and the US, date-processing and related industries in the Kingdom have also failed to catch up with the technological advancement in the area.
The industry faces many obstacles in promoting Saudi dates in the international markets. Saudi farmers’ reluctance to switch over to modern farming techniques is one of the reasons that make businessmen hesitate to enter the field.
