Crop talk: It’s a date!

It is the season for dates in Pakistan. With Ramzan around the corner, there will over the next few weeks be a sudden influx of dates being sold on roadside carts and at the checkout counters of department stores. The seasonal novelty and religious symbolism associated with this fruit means that at least once a year dates are everywhere in Pakistan. 

And it is precisely because of this that most people assume that the dates we consume are imported from the middle east. At the very least, the general perception is that dates from Saudi Arabia and Iran in particular are of a higher quality. While this might be true, Pakistan is surprisingly one of the largest producers of dates in the entire world.