The air seems like an oven this time of yr within the Bard valley. The temperature has reached over 110F daily for weeks now – some days coming near 120F – forcing most residents of the agricultural valley, nestled on the intersection of the Arizona, California and Mexican borders, inside. However the date palms at Solar Backyard Farms find it irresistible.
As a heatwave rolls throughout the south-west, leaving cities like Phoenix and Loss of life Valley nationwide park experiencing record-setting temperatures, crops are wilting within the excessive warmth – leaving many farmers fearful their yields will fall come harvest. However right here, the warmth, nonetheless excessive it feels, is welcomed. Dates are constructed for desert climates and the temperature will assist the fruits ripen as their sugars develop.
Tons of of date palms fill Solar Backyard Farms’ almost 200-acre property. However every palm, and each different one of many hundreds of date palms grown throughout the Bard valley area, are descendants of only one palm that was rising in Morocco almost 100 years in the past. When the harvest begins subsequent month, the grandchildren of that Moroccan date palm will feed date lovers internationally – at the same time as different crops wrestle to outlive rising temperatures.
Within the south-westernmost nook of Arizona, simply 3 miles from California and 10 miles from Mexico, the city of Yuma is considered one of North America’s most essential agricultural hubs. Nicknamed “The Winter Salad Bowl”, the Yuma space provides the USA and Canada with 90% of its winter, leafy greens – even within the coldest months of winter, temperatures don’t usually fall under 50F.
Though most of Yuma’s agricultural exercise happens within the wintertime, it’s notably well-known for one summer season crop: the Medjool date, which can also be grown in neighboring components of California and Mexico. Almost 100 years after it first arrived in the USA, the Medjool date is weathering the acute warmth higher than many different crops – largely as a result of it was imported within the early 1900s due to its capacity to thrive in a sizzling, dry local weather.
“They do nicely as a result of that’s what they like: sizzling or dry climate, particularly within the fruiting season,” mentioned Dennis V Johnson, creator of Imported and American Kinds of Dates in the USA. “What they actually require is about 4 months of very low rainfall, low humidity and excessive temperatures.”
Juan Guzman, senior vice-president of operations on the Yuma-based date firm Pure Delights, agrees: “The outdated adage is that Medjool dates require 100 days over 100 levels to thrive.”
Date palms have been grown within the Americas since no less than the 1700s, when Spanish missionaries started settling in components of modern-day California and Arizona. However the Medjool date selection didn’t arrive till a lot later, after the newly established US Division of Agriculture started hiring “agricultural explorers” to journey the world to gather new crops.
A kind of first explorers was botanist Walter T Swingle, who traveled to Morocco in 1927 to check a fungal illness that had begun infecting date palms there. Though agricultural explorers had imported dates from Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Iraq as early as 1890, Swingle was captivated by the Medjool dates he present in Morocco – they had been nicknamed “the fruit of kings” as a result of they had been as soon as solely eaten by royalty.
After taking soil and air temperatures, and figuring out that the Medjool date would possibly efficiently be grown within the American south-west – a area then nicknamed “the Sahara of the USA” – Swingle bought 11 offshoots from a single feminine date palm. However earlier than these Medjool dates could possibly be grown as crops within the US, they needed to be quarantined to ensure the fungus that had contaminated Morocco’s Medjools wouldn’t unfold. For the subsequent 9 years, the 11 palms had been quarantined within the Nevada desert. In 1936, the palms had been lastly launched – 9 had survived, two dug up by a caretaker’s canine – and replanted in Indio, California, the place the USDA was already rising a wide range of dates, together with the favored Deglet Noor selection, which Swingle had introduced dwelling from Algeria in 1900.
Within the Nineteen Forties, the USDA started distributing these 9 Medjool date palms to growers.
“Six of these had been planted in Bard valley on the intersection of California, Arizona, and Mexico alongside the Colorado River,” David Baxter, director of promoting at Pure Delights, mentioned in an electronic mail. “Medjool dates demand a really particular set of rising situations the place excessive warmth, low humidity and plentiful water meet, and Bard valley is essentially the most supreme location in the USA.” Alongside the arid local weather, the Bard valley additionally has entry to deep aquifers.
All six of these palms, because it occurred, ended up at Solar Backyard Farms, the place businessman and lawyer Stephen Philip Shadle opened a date grove. By the Nineties, Shadle and a number of other different date growers within the area would come collectively to kind the Bard Valley Date Growers Affiliation.
Though there are about 3,000 forms of dates grown worldwide, Medjools are some of the fashionable – partially due to the advocacy of growers’ teams and partially as a result of Medjools are bigger, softer and sweeter than many different varieties. Like different dates, they’re additionally good for you.
“Medjool dates are a wholesome choice any time of yr due to their potassium, magnesium and fiber content material along with the truth that they’re low on the glycemic index,” mentioned Baxter.
Whereas this yr’s excessive warmth has truly been helpful to the date crop, there are different ways in which local weather disaster might have an effect on their development.
“The factor to fret about could be if there are some climatic adjustments that result in extra rainfall than regular,” mentioned Johnson.
Warmth itself isn’t sufficient for a profitable date crop: it’s key that it continues being dry warmth.
Immediately, two of the unique date palms that Swingle imported from Morocco nonetheless stand – at Solar Backyard Farms. Towering almost 100ft within the sky, the 2 palms look over the Bard valley, the place over the previous 70 years hundreds of their offspring have grown.
