Heavy, torrential rains recently fell across all growing regions in the south of Tunisia and persisted for several consecutive days.
These unusual conditions led to much higher-than-normal humidity levels (consistently exceeding 60%), causing fermentation in the dates and significantly affecting both the quality and quantity of the harvest intended for export.
As a result, harvesting has to be stopped for a few days to allow the dates to dry naturally on the trees. So far, only 20% of the harvest is complete, and for the remaining crop, some quality issues due to fermentation are expected.
This will mainly reduce thea vailability of dates with pits and branched dates, leading to a considerably lower yield this season. These factors are likely to result in a sharp increase in market prices.
Almost all growers have taken preventive measures by protecting their date bunches with mosquito nets. As usual, we have not skimped on protection and prevention efforts.
Agronomists and PASA team members are deployed on-site, closely monitoring the situation and providing us with timely information about potential damage.
We will continue to monitor the developments closely and keep you informed as soon as
we have more updates, so we can plan together based on the evolving situation.
Source: Hadj Slimane Boudjebel
