Growers Lobbying to Get Dates Sent to Afghanistan

California date growers trying to get their produce to hungry Afghans say their “date diplomacy” efforts have been fruitless so far.

The California Date Commission has petitioned the White House, the Department of Defense and other federal agencies to include California dates in food packages being distributed in Afghanistan as a humanitarian gesture during the U.S. war on terrorism.

“I haven’t been able to find a person willing to nibble on the idea,” said John Beck, executive director of the Indio-based commission. “It’s a complicated, bureaucratic maze to get a food product over there.”

Beck said he contacted the White House, Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture, U.S. Agency for International Development and other agencies but has been unable to discover who is in charge of the food program.

The growers say they have 8 million pounds of dates in warehouses that they would be willing to sell to the program at a wholesale rate.

California raisins have been included in the food packages.

Industry leaders say California dates would be an ideal addition because Afghanistan is a date-loving country and its crop has been devastated under Taliban rule.

The Coachella Valley in eastern Riverside County, with 5,000 acres under cultivation, grows 31 million pounds of dates a year, 98% of the U.S. crop. The remaining 2% is from around Yuma, Ariz.

Dates sales in this country and abroad traditionally rise during the monthlong Muslim celebration of Ramadan, which began last weekend. “We could have dates there within a week for the final two weeks of Ramadan,” Beck said. “All we need is a military transport plane to get them to Atlanta,” one of the distribution points for the relief effort.

The date effort is backed by Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs).

“The problem is that a lot of these contracts have already been signed,” said Frank Cullen, Bono’s chief of staff. “But we feel dates are a logical product and would be much more acceptable to the Afghanistan population than some of the things already being sent.”

With U.S. help, the United Nations World Food Program delivered 30,000 metric tons of food to Afghanistan in the first two weeks of November. Officials estimated that 6 million Afghans and 1.5 million Afghan refugees depend on international relief programs for food.

U.S. planes from Ramstein Air Base in Germany have air-dropped more than 1.5 million food packages, called “humanitarian daily rations,” into Afghanistan. The rations include rice, beans and flour.

“Flour is fine, but what if they have nothing to add to it or no way to prepare it?” Beck said. “Dates are immediately edible.”