Iran One of World’s Top 3 Dates Producers, Exporters

“In the last [Iranian] year [March 2021-22], 340,000 tons of dates were exported from Iran,” Zahra Jalili Moqaddam said during a recent visit to the Southern Fars Province, a major producer of dates in Iran.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia are Iran’s major rivals in the global dates market.

Jalili Moqaddam noted that India has the biggest share of Iran’s dates export, adding that Pakistan is the next major destination.

“Iran is the biggest exporter of dates in the world,” Chairman of the National Association of Iranian Dates Mohsen Rashid Farrokhi told Financial Tribune in an earlier interview, noting that Egypt ranks second with Saudi Arabia and Tunisia sharing the third spot on the export front.

“Two of Iran’s southern neighbors, namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are reportedly expanding their palm-groves. This can turn them into serious rivals to Iran’s international dates market. At present, our production surpasses theirs by only 50,000-100,000 tons per year. This calls for prompt action on the part of Iranian producers and traders active in the field to elevate our marketing methods and promote the delectable Iranian dates,” Farrokhi said.

The official noted that Afghanistan is also planning to replace part of its poppy cultivation with date palms, adding that due to that country’s geographical location there is only little land where palm-groves could be grown and therefore the harvest will also be relatively meager, which cannot compete with Iranian dates in the foreign markets.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says 8.5 million tons of dates are produced on palm-groves worldwide.

More than a dozen types of dates are mainly cultivated in six Iranian provinces, namely Kerman, Sistan and Balouchestan, Khuzestan, Hormuzgan, Bushehr and Fars, all in the South of the country.

Iran is said to export around 20 percent of its overall production every year.

Per capita dates consumption in Iran is three kilograms per year.

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