People visit a date booth during the Cairo International Dates Festival in Giza, Egypt, on March 3, 2023. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)
CAIRO, March 7 (Xinhua) -- A major expo featuring the palm date, Egypt's strategic fruit crop, concluded on Tuesday on the outskirts of the capital city Cairo.
Attracting agri-businessmen home and abroad, the eight-day event bears the hope of Egypt to turn a product mostly serving domestic consumers into an export flagship.
Eygpt's huge production capacity of palm dates is a key advantage that has been highlighted at the 3rd edition of the Cairo International Dates Festival to some 70 companies from countries including Egypt, Saudi, Libya, Jordan and Sudan.
"The event provided a large platform for marketing and exporting date products," said Mahmoud Hassan, chairman of the festival held in the Orman Botanical Garden in Giza Province.
"Since I came in the morning, I haven't sat down for one minute because we see good purchase power here," Mahmoud Ahmad, the owner of the Egypt-based Siwa Palm Company, told Xinhua.
A man visits a date booth during the Cairo International Dates Festival in Giza, Egypt, on March 3, 2023. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)
At the date expo, plantation materials, seeds, and fresh and dried dates were priced at between 25-250 Egyptian pounds per kg (0.81-8.11 U.S. dollars).
"The prices here are much less than in supermarkets and there are diversified types that could not be found in one shop," said Ibrahim Desouqy, a 50-year-old man who bought 10 kg of dried dates at one of the crowded booths.
The event was held ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, which is expected to start around March 23, when Muslims traditionally break their fasting by eating dates.
Egypt is the largest date-producing country in the world. In 2020, Egypt produced 1.7 million tonnes of dates, contributing over 21 percent of global date production, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The FAO said Egypt has good potential to mass produce semi-dry varieties suitable for export, including the introduced variety Medjool, but despite the growth in international demand, its export contribution to the international dates market is low.
In 2022, Egypt produced 2.2 million tonnes of dates, according to official statistics, but exports account for only 3 percent of the annual production.
Major constraints on Egpyt's date farming are the lack of technical know-how on production practices, post-harvest and processing, the lack of quality control regime, pests and diseases that hinder production expansion, and a weak market information system, according to FAO.
Children show dried dates at Dahshur village in Giza, Egypt, on Sept. 21, 2022. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)
Mohamady Al-Badry, an agriculture expert, agrees that date farming in Egypt experiences problems in quality control, marketing and storage.
Farmers still depend on traditional means of plantation and well-trained workers for processing are not enough, he said, adding farms also suffer mounting transport costs when most of them are located in remote deserts, while outdated tree-wastes treating facilities also affect the sector.
Dates are usually harvested in Egypt two or three months ahead of prime sales time in international markets. The short shelf time for fresh dates and the lack of sufficient cold chain facilities have forced local palm owners to sell in domestic markets instead of export, according to the expert.
Nevertheless, the Egyptian government is keen to introduce the country's dates to foreign markets, as the fruit can bring in lucrative income and help create more jobs, Hassan said.
Egypt is working on a national project to build the largest palm farm in the world, supported by the 2.5 million date palm trees growing in Toshka and Owainat in the southern deserts.
The project focuses on growing the Medjool variety with advanced agri-tech, and roads are being built to connect the plantations with ports or markets.
A farmer harvests dates at Dahshur village in Giza, Egypt, on Sept. 21, 2022. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)
With these efforts, "Egypt's production of Medjool dates would be ramped up by three times and the country would rise from the current eighth exporter to the fourth internationally," said Hassan, the festival's chairman.
At the expo, Ahmad Jabreel, a palm date merchant from Lybia said his family has been in this business for 100 years and he took part in the previous two editions.
"Egypt is a good destination for marketing our products and a good gateway for selling our products to other African countries," Jabreel added. ■
