@fao Egypt Pictures from the workshop

CAIRO, January 16, 2017: The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) Egypt office today organised an inception workshop on a technical cooperation project to develop the value chain of dates in Egypt.

The workshop is part of the country’s Date Palm Strategy, launched in October during the 2nd Egyptian Date Palm Festival at Siwa oasis. It was held in cooperation with the ministry of trade and industry, the ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, the Khalifa International Date Palm Award and Agricultural Innovation, and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO).

The workshop was organised to discuss the project's general goals and outline, devise a detailed action plan, and learn lessons from similar projects.

Commenting on the workshop, FAO Representative in Egypt, Dr. Hussein Gadain, said: “Implementing the Date Palm Strategy is expected to qualify Egyptian dates to compete in international markets. The project seeks to present a successful model by executing an action plan under ideal conditions and putting the strategy to work at Siwa, in coordination and cooperation with all stakeholders. We hope that other regions will follow suit.”

For his part, FAO Project Advisor, Abdullah bin Abdullah, said: “One of the goals of the project is to enhance the income sustainability for date growers, producers, harvesters, exporters, and merchants. The project is expected to help produce high quality dates to compete globally. Good date types or varieties will be preserved as genetic resources and used to create a gene bank.”

Dr. Abdel Moneim al-Banna, President of the Agricultural Research Center, a representative of the Minister of Agriculture, said "this inception workshop we announce the beginning of the implementation of Date Palm Strategy in Egypt's, which aims to achieve a comprehensive revival of the sector based on rapid and sustainable development of the production systems, assembly, packaging, manufacturing activities and exporting, beside taking advantage of date palm remnants of which will benefit the general budget, investors, manufacturers and traders, particularly small farmers. "

Ms. Hanan El Hadary, Chairman of Industrial Council for Technology and Innovation, Ministry of Trade and Industry in a speech on behalf of the Minister said: "the workshop comes the culmination of efforts to present an action plan for the strategic development of the dates sector to develop the dates value chain in Siwa as a repeatable model in other areas of production and training a number of coaches in all of those areas on the agenda of the development of the supply chain and maximizing the value-added packaging, marketing and export. "

Dates are strategic for Egypt, which is the world’s top producer of the crop, outranking Iran and Saudi Arabia. Egypt produces 1,465,030 tonnes of dates annually, or 17.7 percent of the global production of 7.5 million tonnes, according the 2014 statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation.