Friday, September 14, 2007

Who is eating all the UAE's dates?

Gulf News
The country ranked fourth in the value of dates produced for the global market in 2005, accounting for a 37 per cent share, according to a study released yesterday by the DCCI.

But its share of date exports as a proportion of the total date trade was just five per cent, leading to demands for a clear export strategy.
And the UAE imports dates as well.

In a country of 5 million people (and 40 million date trees), that means an extremely heavy per capita date consumption. Or are dates doing to waste?

Is the imbalance due to the government's date purchase policy?

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2 Comments:

Blogger secretdubai said...

I was rather amused to find Israeli dates on the supermarket shelves on a recent trip back to the UK. Probably not something you'd find in Spinneys. I didn't buy them.

The best dates I have had are actually American ones, though I hate to admit it since it seems wrong that Arabian ones wouldn't be the best. But the huge great American dates they sell in Spinneys (very expensive ones) were just amazing. I rather fear they may be quite GM compared to Saudi or UAE ones, but they were extremely tasty. Large, fat, juicy, sticky, rich.

5:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi, interesting reading about UAE dates. Actually, dates are a fasinating produce. We have a farm that produces several kinds of dates. Each having a nice name, there are the red dates and the normal ones, and there are various sizes too. Not just just a lot is exported, some are given to various places. As for us, we distribute small boxes full to neighbours who then distribute and share with relatives . That is one example. The over riped dates are left on a weave mat or several mats to dry out, and some will have the syrup extracted. The dried up ones are made into various date candies,date cookies, date cakes and packed dates which are sold all year round when fresh dates are not in season. The syrup extracted is used and sold as date syrup which is widely used in breakfast recipes and most especially during Ramadhan time.

5:53 PM  

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