The Date Shortage

Good dates are getting harder to find.

Under pressure from both urbanization and economics, the number of acres devoted to date palms has shrunk by 15% in the last three years. Despite increases in yield per acre, that has led to a steady decline in the amount of dates harvested.

This year is no different, says Carol Brownell, manager of the California Date Commission, a marketing group for date farmers. “The quality will be better than last year,” she says, “but there won’t be as many. We had late summer rains that pulled down the crop.”

Date acreage has been declining because of real estate development in the area around Palm Desert, the center of California (and, therefore, U.S.) date farming. In addition, date farmers are finding they can make good money by selling their tallest trees to landscapers. Date palms are one of the few fruit trees that can be safely transplanted at full maturity.

Depending on the year, about half of the date harvest is sold fresh and the rest goes to processing--to be ground into those little pebbles that show up in everything from yogurt to cookies to dried cereals.

The date of choice for those industrial uses is the deglet noor, which means “date of light.” It is a dense, chewy, caramel-like date that makes up about 95% of the California harvest.

To many, the best date for eating out of hand is the medjool, which is very soft, almost liquid, and has a complex hint of anise in the flavor. Medjools are a scarcity outside the state because they don’t ship very well and account for only about 5% of the harvest.

If you look around, you can also find many of the more than a dozen other date varieties grown in California--zahidis, khadrawys, halawys, empresses, honeys, thooris and barhees--though you’ll probably have to go to farmers markets, which are great sources of unusual dates.

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Carolyn Olney of the Southland Farmers Market Assn. reports that Everett DaVall is selling wonderful honey dates that he grows near Indio. He can be found at the Adams-Vermont, San Dimas and Santa Monica markets on Wednesday, Monrovia on Friday, Pomona on Saturday, Beverly Hills on Sunday and Culver City on Tuesday.