# Where do dates come from?

Source: Commodity Origins, https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/dates/ — data JSON: https://commodityorigins.com/data/commodities/dates.json — license CC BY 4.0 (upstream data keeps its license; see Sources below).

Dates come mainly from Saudi Arabia, which produced 1.9 million tonnes in 2024, 19% of the world's 9.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Egypt (18%), Algeria (13%) and Iran (12%) follow; the top five together supply 68%. The biggest exporter of dates (HS 080410) is Saudi Arabia (18% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The date palm needs its feet in water and its head in fire, as the Arabic saying has it: intense summer heat to ripen the fruit and irrigation or groundwater at the roots, a combination found in desert oases from Morocco to Pakistan.

*The fruit of the date palm, dried on the tree in desert oases and eaten year-round.* Also called: date palm, medjool, deglet nour.

## Where do dates come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saudi Arabia | 1.9 million | 19% |
| 2 | Egypt | 1.8 million | 18% |
| 3 | Algeria | 1.3 million | 13% |
| 4 | Iran | 1.2 million | 12% |
| 5 | Pakistan | 604,243 | 6.1% |
| 6 | Iraq | 587,190 | 5.9% |
| 7 | Sudan | 443,134 | 4.5% |
| 8 | Oman | 400,655 | 4% |
| 9 | Tunisia | 400,219 | 4% |
| 10 | United Arab Emirates | 333,632 | 3.4% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 9.7% |
| | World | 9.9 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Saudi Arabia produced 1.9 million tonnes, 19% of the world's 9.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Egypt followed with 18%, then Algeria (13%), Iran (12%) and Pakistan (6.1%). The top five account for 68%, 36 countries reported output and 9.7% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +34% over the ten years to 2024 and -0% on the previous year.

Date growing follows a belt of hot arid country across North Africa, the Middle East and into South Asia, and it is one of the oldest cultivated crops on earth, domesticated in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria and Iraq dominate, with the United States and Israel producing smaller quantities of high-value varieties for export markets.

Varieties matter more here than in most fruit. Medjool and Deglet Nour dominate the international premium trade, the first a large soft date and the second a semi-dry variety that stores and ships well, while dozens of regional varieties are eaten locally and rarely leave their country of origin.

## Who exports and imports dates?

### Exporters of dates, fresh or dried (HS 080410), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saudi Arabia | $441.6 million | 18% |
| 2 | Tunisia | $366.9 million | 15% |
| 3 | Israel | $266.6 million | 11% |
| 4 | United Arab Emirates | $249 million | 10% |
| 5 | Iran | $188.9 million | 7.7% |
| 6 | Algeria | $167.8 million | 6.8% |
| 7 | Egypt | $104.9 million | 4.3% |
| 8 | Iraq | $101.8 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | United States | $66.1 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Palestine | $57.6 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Pakistan | $53.4 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | France | $51 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Jordan | $42.7 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $39.6 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $34.8 million | 1.4% |

### Importers of dates, fresh or dried (HS 080410), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $287.3 million | 12% |
| 2 | Morocco | $244.5 million | 9.9% |
| 3 | United Arab Emirates | $201.1 million | 8.2% |
| 4 | France | $128.3 million | 5.2% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $113.4 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $112.3 million | 4.6% |
| 7 | Germany | $109.9 million | 4.5% |
| 8 | United States | $106.3 million | 4.3% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $101.2 million | 4.1% |
| 10 | Indonesia | $77.4 million | 3.1% |
| 11 | Canada | $66.9 million | 2.7% |
| 12 | Malaysia | $56.6 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Spain | $56.6 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Russia | $48.2 million | 2% |
| 15 | Italy | $44.6 million | 1.8% |

Source: CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601).

Saudi Arabia was the largest exporter of dates (HS 080410) in 2024 with 18% of world export value, ahead of Tunisia (15%), on world trade of $2.5 billion (CEPII BACI). India was the largest importer with 12%.

The trade divides into two quite different markets. The premium trade in named varieties, Medjool above all, sells whole graded fruit into North America, Europe and the Gulf at high prices per kilogram. The bulk trade moves lower-grade dates for paste, syrup and industrial use, and for the very large Ramadan demand across the Muslim world, at a fraction of the price.

That second market has a pronounced annual rhythm: buying builds ahead of Ramadan and collapses afterwards, and the timing shifts each year with the lunar calendar, which producers and traders plan around.

## What do dates cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for this crop, so this site quotes none. Dates are sold by variety, grade, size and moisture content, negotiated between packers and importers. Prices for premium Medjool are several times those of bulk industrial fruit, so an average date price would be close to meaningless.

The visible references are wholesale market reports in importing countries and, in producing countries, government or cooperative purchase prices. Because dates dry naturally on the palm and store for months or years without refrigeration, the market has far more inventory flexibility than any fresh fruit, which damps price volatility considerably.

## What moves the price of dates?

### Ramadan demand

Consumption concentrates sharply around Ramadan, when dates are traditionally eaten to break the fast, and the buying season shifts about eleven days earlier each year with the lunar calendar. Traders position inventory months in advance around that date.

### Water availability

Date palms are irrigated from groundwater or oasis springs in some of the driest inhabited regions on earth. Aquifer depletion in the Gulf and North Africa is a genuine long-run constraint on planting, and one that does not respond to price.

### Red palm weevil

An invasive beetle that bores into the trunk has spread across the Middle East and North Africa, killing mature palms that take years to replace. Control is difficult because the damage is hidden until the tree is nearly dead.

### Harvest weather

Rain or high humidity during ripening splits and spoils fruit on the palm, and because the harvest window is short, a single unseasonal storm can destroy a large share of a region's crop.

### Variety premium

Medjool and other premium varieties command multiples of the bulk price, so a shift in planting toward them raises the value of a country's crop without raising its tonnage, and vice versa.

## How are dates produced?

The date palm is dioecious, meaning male and female trees are separate, so orchards are planted almost entirely with females and pollinated by hand or by machine from a small number of males. Palms are propagated from offshoots or, increasingly, from tissue culture, because seedlings do not reproduce the parent variety.

A palm begins bearing four to eight years after planting and produces for decades. Bunches are thinned to improve fruit size, bagged to protect from rain, birds and insects, and harvested by hand from ladders or platforms, often in several passes as fruit ripens unevenly.

Dates pass through recognized ripening stages, and different varieties are harvested at different ones: some are picked at the crisp stage, most at the soft ripe stage. After harvest fruit is fumigated or frozen to control insects, graded, washed, sometimes rehydrated or dried to a target moisture, and packed. Lower grades are pitted and pressed into paste, or pressed for syrup.

## What are dates used for?

Most dates are eaten as fruit, whole or pitted, and their role in Ramadan gives them a cultural significance far beyond their tonnage. Date paste is used in baking, confectionery and cereal bars, and date syrup is both a traditional sweetener and a growing natural-sugar substitute in food manufacture.

By-products are used thoroughly in producing regions. Pits are milled for animal feed or roasted as a coffee substitute and pressed for oil; the palm's fronds, fiber and trunk are used for building, basketry and fuel. Lower-grade fruit and processing residue are fed to livestock or fermented.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is unusually forgiving because the product is dry. Dates need no cold chain for bulk grades, store for months at ambient temperature and travel in ordinary containers, so the logistics constraints that dominate fresh fruit barely apply. Premium soft varieties like Medjool are chilled or frozen to maintain texture, which is a cost but not a fragility.

Processing is concentrated in packhouses near the growing regions, where fumigation or freezing for insect control, grading and packing take place. Insect disinfestation is a real requirement rather than a formality, and importing countries specify it.

The structural risks are water and the red palm weevil. Both are slow-moving and neither responds to price. A palm killed by weevil takes the better part of a decade to replace, so losses accumulate rather than reverse.

## Timeline

- 4000 BCE: Date palms are domesticated in Mesopotamia. One of the earliest cultivated fruit crops, the date palm underpinned oasis agriculture and remains grown in broadly the same belt today. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1900s: Offshoots are imported to California and Arizona. Introduction of Medjool and Deglet Nour to the American southwest created a high-value production region that supplies premium export markets. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1980s: Red palm weevil begins spreading westward. An invasive borer moved from South Asia into the Gulf and then North Africa, killing mature palms and imposing a permanent control cost on the industry. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2000s: Tissue culture propagation scales up. Producing genetically identical palms in the laboratory allowed rapid expansion of premium varieties and reduced dependence on limited offshoot supply. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2015: Date syrup and paste enter mainstream food manufacture. Demand for natural sweeteners created an industrial market for lower-grade fruit, raising the value of crop that had previously gone to animal feed. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most dates

Saudi Arabia produced 1.9 million tonnes in 2024, 19% of the world's 9.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Egypt was second with 18%. Production is concentrated in the hot arid belt from North Africa through the Middle East into South Asia.

### why do date prices vary so much by variety

Because premium varieties such as Medjool sell for several times the price of bulk fruit destined for paste and syrup. An average date price would be meaningless, and the trade quotes by variety, grade, size and moisture content.

### why does date demand peak before Ramadan

Dates are traditionally eaten to break the fast, so consumption concentrates sharply during the month. Because Ramadan moves about eleven days earlier each year with the lunar calendar, traders position inventory around a shifting date rather than a fixed season.

### how are date palms pollinated

By hand or machine. The palm is dioecious, with separate male and female trees, so orchards are planted almost entirely with females and pollen from a few males is applied to the flower clusters, which gives growers control over fruit set.

### what is the red palm weevil

An invasive beetle whose larvae bore into the palm trunk, killing mature trees. It spread from South Asia across the Middle East and North Africa, and because damage stays hidden until the tree is nearly dead, control is difficult and losses accumulate over years.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601), BACI HS22 V202601, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Etalab Open Licence 2.0. https://www.cepii.fr/CEPII/en/bdd_modele/bdd_modele_item.asp?id=37

Text last reviewed 2026-09-05. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where do dates come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/dates/.