Seventh Local Dates Festival to kick start at Souq Waqif Wednesday

The Seventh Local Dates Festival in Qatar for 2022 season, which is organized by the Ministry of Municipality represented by the Department of Agricultural Affairs, is set to start Wednesday in cooperation with Souq Waqif Services Centre and will continue until August 10 with the participation of a wide range of local farms. The organization of this event comes within the framework the state of Qatar's great interest in supporting and encouraging the domestic production of the entire national products, including dates in conjunction with the season of dates production in Qatar within the strenuous efforts dedicated to achieving food security, commitment to developing agriculture sector and palm trees, supporting farms owners and those interested in dates cultivation, in addition to promoting the dates cultivars across the country. For his part, Director of the Agricultural Affairs Department Yousuf Khalid Al Khulaifi affirmeded that the festival intends to promote the production of dates, including the entire dates cultivars and encourage the owners of local farms to further offer and market their production from dates directly to the beneficiaries which would reflect positively on their sales volume and strengthen their abilities to increase production and upgrade the marketing methods. He pointed out that the festival is considered an opportunity to exchange experiences between the palm farmers to increase the area of the cultivated lands and contribute to developing this sector and subsequently produce the best cultivars. Director of Souq Waqif, Mohammed Al Salem confirmed that the suitable venue of the festival has been selected and is entirely equipped with the necessary structures, including the camp in which the festival will be held at Souq Waqif's Al Ahmad Square. The festival will open its doors for the audiences from 3pm until 9pm except Friday in which the doors will open from 1pm until 10pm. More than 80 farms are participating in this festival where the entire participating entities will roll out their production from various cultivars of local dates. The festival's organizing committee has determined several requirements and prerequisites for the entities that are willing to participate, including that the entities should make sure that the dates are good, clean and free of insects, while a team of professionals from Department of Agricultural Affairs will embark on collecting samples of the dates for further examination and analysis to ensure that they are free of hazardous materials, including pesticide residues. The committee also affirmed its commitment to pursuing the precautionary measures to reduce the spread of Coronavirus, calling on the audience to adhere to the precautionary measures.