Last week, one of our Medjoul date suppliers told us the dates have started turning yellow in the Jordan Valley. Once the fruit shifts from green to yellow, harvest is close. This year, that means around 45 days away, with picking expected to begin in the first half of September.
It’s around this time each year that we catch up with our partners to talk through the season ahead: the weather, irrigation, fruit size, quality, capacity and the all-important harvest forecast.
This year they’re expecting good quality fruit and a modest increase in yield. Earlier in the season the crop was nearly three weeks behind, but it caught up well over the summer and is now running about 10 days later than last year. Like businesses everywhere, they’re also contending with rising costs – water, fuel, other agricultural inputs, packaging and transport, not to mention exchange rates that have moved sharply against them.
But harvest planning is never just about the crop. This year we also heard about 4-hour queues at petrol stations. We heard that highly qualified professionals are taking whatever work they can find – even an anaesthetist is now working on the fruit-sorting lines because the Ministry of Health can no longer guarantee more than a day or two of work a week. The majority of Palestinian Authority employees are receiving no more than 60% of their salaries.
Because this date supplier lives in Jerusalem, our conversation inevitably turned to life in the city as well. He described an Old City that felt unusually quiet, with far fewer Palestinians than he would normally expect to see. He said people were keeping a low profile, avoiding unnecessary contact and trying to keep things calm, creating an atmosphere very different from the bustling Old City many visitors will remember. “Everyone is careful. Nothing feels normal”, he told us.
Despite so many things being out of his hands, or perhaps because of it, he’s building for the season ahead and adapting to the increased movement restrictions and lack of predictability: he’s invested in a new sorting and packing line, a highly experienced Quality Manager, and installed an in-house lab so testing can happen faster and more often.
With the local economy on its knees, “export is the best sector in the economy at the moment,” he said. “So we have to keep going.”
The harvest still needs pickers. Packing houses still need staff. Containers still need loading. In a few weeks, the Jordan Valley will be busy again – harvest teams on ladders and cherry pickers, dates arriving at the packing houses to be washed, sorted and packed, containers beginning their journey overseas.
Join us in wishing our partners a peaceful and bountiful harvest.
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