Dates Production by Country 2024

What this chart shows. The 20 countries that produced the most dates in 2024, in thousands of tonnes. Saudi Arabia led with 1,927.6 thousand tonnes, followed by Egypt with 1,750.3 thousand and Algeria with 1,337.3 thousand. The world total was 9.9 million tonnes.

How the data is collected. The figures come from FAOSTAT, the statistics database of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, which collects national production data through annual questionnaires and fills gaps with its own estimates. For dates the gaps are large: only 5 of these 20 figures are official national data, and most of the rest are values FAO imputed itself.

Background. World date production was 34.5 per cent higher than in 2014. Saudi Arabia rose from fifth place in 2014 to first, while Egypt, the leader in 2014, was second. The top three together produced 50.4 per cent of the world total.

Limits. Because so many figures are imputed, year-to-year changes for single countries say more about FAO's estimation than about harvests. Pakistan's imputed figure, for example, is 32.5 per cent below 2023. FAOSTAT lists date production for only 36 countries; the 20 shown account for 98.7 per cent of it.