Approaching the holy month of Ramadan (this year 18 June – 16 July) in Islamic countries, as dates are usually the first food to break the fast (Iftar) Iranian officials gave an account of the stored reservoir of dates in Iran.
Seventeen days before the beginning of Ramadan, Aboulghasem Hassanpour the head of Iranian Agricultural Jihad Ministry’s department for tropical and subtropical fruits, described the date supply allocated for Ramadan, 'enough.'
Proportioning the date supply with the population of Iran, he calculated there would be 2.5 kilograms of dates per capita in Ramadan, as there is 195,000 tons of it stored in depots across the country.
Hassanpour added that Iranian date farmers have more than 232,000 hectares of land on date, harvesting more than 1,140,000 tons of it annually.
Iran stands on the second place of the list after Egypt which produces 1,470,000 tons of dates annually, the Iranian official said.
Recounting the leading date-producing and exporting countries, Hassanpour named Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Iraq although fruit from Algeria and Tunisia also is well known in Europe. He also added that Iran tops in this group in terms of the land dedicated to date farming.
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