Local dates festival to kick off in Souq Waqif today

The Seventh Local Dates Festival in Qatar for 2022 season is set to this Wednesday in cooperation with Souq Waqif Services Centre.

Organised by the Ministry of Municipality represented by the Department of Agricultural Affairs, the festival will continue until August 10, with the participation of a wide range of local farms.

Director of the Agricultural Affairs Department Yousuf Khalid Al Khulaifi affirmed that the festival intends to promote the production of dates 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.

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 festival will open its doors for the audiences from 3 pm until 9 pm except Friday in which the doors will open from 1 pm until 10 pm.