A date is the fruit of a palm tree, and palm trees say “tropical beach” to almost everybody. So here is a surprise before you even start: in USDA's 2022 farm census only five states have a printed date figure at all. Date growing is fussy, hands-on work. University of California Cooperative Extension, costing out a real date orchard in the California desert, records that the trees are dioecious — “male and female flowers are in separate trees” — and that in a grove “Pollination is done manually as there is no natural means of transferring pollen from male plants to female plants.” Out in the wild it is less absolute: the University of Arizona’s Campus Arboretum says “Pollen is usually wind borne from the male flowers to the females but in cultivation, pollination may be done manually by workers.” Either way, the dates you buy were pollinated by a person, on purpose. Then, once the fruit has set, the grower puts a paper hat over every bunch: “paper covers (resembling lamp shades) are used to protect the dates from possible rain damage during the fall months and from infestation by sooty black mold during the fall ripening months.” Which of these three states has the most acres of date palms old enough to fruit? Tap them most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→3 in order
Palm trees mean beaches — and I can't find Florida anywhere on this list! Fine. New Mexico, because it sounds hot. 🐾
2Answer
The real order is…
California — 11,985 acres out of 15,755 acres for the whole country. That is more than three of every four American date acres standing in one state, and about 3.19×Arizona. Add those two together and there is almost nothing left for anybody else. Then look at what follows them: third place, New Mexico, prints 4 acres. Florida — the state everyone pictures the moment you say “palm tree” — prints 1. Hawaii prints 1. Whatever decides where dates grow, it is plainly not “wherever a palm tree looks right.” The growers in first place spend money every autumn on paper covers to keep rain off the fruit — and Biscuit’s Field Note takes up the why of this map instead of guessing at it. One more thing about that third-place state while you are here: the very same state harvests more acres of chile peppers than any other state in the country.
📚 BackgroundA date grows on a palm tree, and palm trees make most people think of beaches. Hold that thought, because a date orchard is run in a way no beach crop ever is. University of California Cooperative Extension, writing down what date growing actually costs in the Coachella Valley, records two things that ought to stop you. A tree is either male or female, and in a commercial grove nobody waits for the wind to sort it out: “Date palm trees are dioecious, i.e. male and female flowers are in separate trees,” and “Pollination is done manually as there is no natural means of transferring pollen from male plants to female plants.” In the wild it is less absolute — the University of Arizona’s Campus Arboretum writes that “Pollen is usually wind borne from the male flowers to the females but in cultivation, pollination may be done manually by workers” — but an orchard is not the wild. And once the fruit has set, the growers spend money keeping it dry — during the fruit-bearing stage, “paper covers (resembling lamp shades) are used to protect the dates from possible rain damage during the fall months and from infestation by sooty black mold during the fall ripening months.” A crop pollinated by hand and shielded from rain is not a beach crop. In USDA's 2022 farm census, only five states have a printed date figure at all.(University of California Cooperative Extension, “Sample Costs to Establish A Date Palm Orchard and Produce Dates in the Coachella Valley, Riverside County, 2005-2006”; University of Arizona Campus Arboretum, “Phoenix dactylifera”)↗ (opens in a new tab)
Palm trees mean beaches — and I can't find Florida anywhere on this list! Fine. New Mexico, because it sounds hot. 🐾
3Compare
Date palm acres of bearing age (2022 Census of Agriculture)
🇺🇸 United States (national)15,755 acres
California#111,985 acres
Most: California (11,985 acres); at the bottom of the printed list: Hawaii (1 acres) — and Florida prints the same single acre.
Note: acres of date palms old enough to bear fruit, in 2022, from USDA's Census of Agriculture — a count taken once every five years, not a yearly estimate. Palms still too young to fruit are counted on a separate line and are not in this table. USDA NASS. USDA printed a date figure for five states. Three more — Nevada, New York and Texas — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms, and the other 42 states have no line in the table at all. Everything USDA did not print comes to three acres in total, so the top three places here are national places — a check this site re-runs on every build. The two one-acre lines at the bottom sit inside that three-acre margin, so read them as printed figures rather than as national rankings.
Pollinated by hand, then wrapped up against the rain 🐾
Date palm acres of bearing age (2022 Census of Agriculture)
Rank
State
Value
Share of U.S. total
#1
California
11,985 acres
76.1%
#2
Arizona
3,761 acres
23.9%
#3
New Mexico
4 acres
0%
#4
Florida
1 acres
0%
#4
Hawaii
1 acres
0%
🇺🇸 USA (total)
15,755 acres
100%
USDA printed a date figure for five states. Three more — Nevada, New York and Texas — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms, and the other 42 states have no line in the table at all. Everything USDA did not print comes to three acres in total, so the top three places here are national places — a check this site re-runs on every build. The two one-acre lines at the bottom sit inside that three-acre margin, so read them as printed figures rather than as national rankings.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (2022)
Sources
Data as of: 2022
USDA NASS Quick Stats: DATES - ACRES BEARING, 2022 Census of Agriculture, by state↗ (opens in a new tab) (2026-08-31) — Published values only (the committed raw file holds the API response verbatim). USDA prints a date figure for five states. Three more — Nevada, New York and Texas — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms, and the other 42 states have no line in the table at all. Everything USDA did not print comes to three acres in total (the national total minus the printed figures), so the top three printed places are national places — a check this site re-runs on every build. The two one-acre lines at the bottom are inside that margin, so read them as printed figures rather than as national ranks.
↳ In Quick Stats, pick DATES / DATES - ACRES BEARING, Census year 2022, Total domain, and compare states.