Riyadh – Mubasher: The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Council approved Saudi Arabia's proposal to declare 2027 the International Year of Date Palm.
The recommendation is to be submitted for adoption by the United Nations General Assembly at its next session, according to a statement on Sunday.
According to FAO statistics, the global date palm production covers an area of more than one million hectares, and the total production is about 8.5 million metric tonnes.
Date palm cultivation expands to Asia (648,300 ha), Africa (435,700 ha), Europe (947 ha) and the Americas (7022 ha), while Asia and Africa lead date producing regions accounting for 8.55% and 4.43%, respectively, of the total world harvest.
Saudi Arabia is among the leading producers of dates, accounting for 17% of the global date production. It has over 31 million palm trees with annual production exceeding 1.5 million tonnes.
The environment ministry aims to increase Saudi dates exports to meet 80% of the target to reach 200,000 tonnes by the end of 2020, and to become the world's biggest exporter of dates in 2021 by increasing the dates exports by 12% per year to SAR 1.75 billion and 222,000 tonnes.
