In Yemen, dates provide lifeline for farmers with few economic options

By Saeed Al Batati. Published On 2 Sep 20262 Sep 2026.

Key points

• Farmers here in Hajr, regarding two hours west of Hadramout's provincial capital of Mukalla, picked the dates concerning a week ago from vast palm groves nearby.
• "I owe 1 million Yemeni riyals to the grocery, and I will not be able to pay it back if I don't sell the dates, " Rashed notes.
• This person travelled from a mountainous village in Hadramout, the reputation of Hajr's dates and their perceived health benefits create the long journey to the district worthwhile.
• Nabeel Ahmed and his family arrive before sunrise and head directly to their spot on the rocky ground, where their dates are spread out.
• "These rocky grounds are used to spread out the dates, clean them, and sell them to customers, " Nabeel notes.

Hajr, Yemen – Under the scorching sun of eastern Yemen's Hadramout region, locals – young and old – immerse themselves in the annual date harvest, working among dark mounds of freshly harvested fruit spread throughout stones.

Farmers here in Hajr, regarding two hours west of Hadramout's provincial capital of Mukalla, picked the dates concerning a week ago from vast palm groves nearby. After traditional techniques that have endured for centuries, they then brought them to this open ground so the dates can be dried, cleaned, and eventually sold.

As he runs his hands through a pile of dates and holds up a handful, "My wife, my brothers and I come here before sunrise and stay until the sun gets hot, " Nabeel tells Al Jazeera.

Farmers and their families return every day to turn and sort the dates, removing rotten or damaged fruit before preparing the harvest for sale. Their aim is to create the dates as attractive as feasible to buyers.

As the farmers work, buyers move between the piles, inspecting the fruit in search of good-quality dates at the lowest feasible costs. Nabeel is fortunate: someone eventually agrees to purchase some of his harvest.

While keeping some for my family to eat, "I harvest the dates and sell some of them. I put some into small bags for Ramadan and other days. We usually eat dates with coffee every day. This is my sole source of income, " he notes, pointing to small bags filled with dates.

Beyond providing an annual source of income, dates additionally offer a basic food safety net for some of Hajr's poorest families. "If a farmer cannot provide food for his children, he gives them dates and coffee, because some families cannot even afford fish and rice, " Nabeel notes.

Hajr consists of scattered communities along a long valley filled with palm trees and traversed by a river. While roads linking its communities are largely unpaved and dusty, the main road connecting the district with other parts of Hadramout has deteriorated after years of poor maintenance. The district has no electricity, and mobile phone services are poor.

It has additionally experienced repeated outbreaks of cholera. It locals and health office-holders attribute mainly to inadequate sanitation and a lack of access to clean water.

Hajr might be far from Yemen's front lines, but it is still suffering from the effects of more than a decade of war in the country, and the lack of a stable administration that can alleviate poverty.

It's why Hajr's vast date palm groves are a lifeline here, providing income and opportunities. There are no official figures on the number of palm trees or the district's annual date production, but local authorities informed Al Jazeera that there are at least 2 million palm trees in the district. The palm trees are effectively the centre of Hajr's economy.

At the open-air drying ground. It turns into a temporary market during the harvest season, Rashed Mohammed, a father of four, has turned down offers from a number of buyers at costs he considered too low.

But he worries that if he cannot sell his harvest during the few remaining days of the season, he will be unable to repay his debt to a local grocery shop.

Like plenty of farmers in the district whose main source of income is selling dates, Rashed buys essential food for his family on credit throughout the year, promising to repay the shopkeeper after the harvest. Other farmers put off weddings, building houses or buying essential goods until they have harvested and sold their dates.

At the end of the day, if no buyers arrive, family members return home while Rashed and other farmers stay behind, sleeping in makeshift shelters built from palm fronds. They remain partly to protect their harvest from thieves and stray dogs, but additionally to be available around the clock in case a buyer turns up."The customer can come at any time, so I sleep here, " Rashed states.

Farmers say one reason they continue to market their dates at the open-air market is that they cannot afford to transport their harvest to larger markets elsewhere in Yemen. Poverty is so severe, they say, that some farmers do not have enough cash to pay drivers to transport their dates and instead compensate them with plastic crates filled with dates.

As palm trees die and date production dwindles, awadh Mubarak, a farmer and the head of a local farmers' committee in Hajr's Jawl region, notes numerous farmers have abandoned agriculture for other jobs, including joining the security and military services.

Farmers say floods a few months ago destroyed a small dam that diverted water from the river to their farms, significantly reducing the amount of water reaching their palm groves and contributing to the death of trees.

In practice, the damage is visible along the road through Hajr, where numerous palms stand bare or almost leafless, their dried fronds hanging from dead and dying trunks. Awadh notes rebuilding the dam is the farmers' most pressing demand.

"Our primary demand is the reconstruction of the dam. The situation is extremely tough. Plenty of farmers have abandoned their palm groves and gone to other jobs, or emigrated, " Awadh states, showing Al Jazeera water flowing away from farmland instead of being diverted towards the groves.

Farmers have additionally called on investors and the administration to build a date-processing and packaging factory, saying it would save them time and support them market their produce.

"We need a date-packaging factory to handle the large quantities of dates produced in the district, " Awadh notes. "Instead of my family and me going out every day to clean the dates, for example, we could take them to the factory, where they could be processed in a day, saving us time and effort."

For buyers such as Omer Mohammed. This person travelled from a mountainous village in Hadramout, the reputation of Hajr's dates and their perceived health benefits create the long journey to the district worthwhile.

As he rests inside a makeshift shelter while workers pack the dates he has purchased into bags, "Hajr dates are the best in Hadramout because they are low in sugar, " notes Omer.

"Back in my school days, when doctors needed blood, they would take it from residents of Hajr because they ate dates, " he notes, recalling a local belief concerning their health benefits.

"I purchase enough dates for myself and my relatives to last the entire year. If I have dates in my house, I feel food secure, even if I don't eat them."

Taken together, the developments around in Yemen, dates provide lifeline for farmers with few economic options point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.