By Brett Rapkin-Citrenbaum, ASU sustainable food systems graduate student
On a sunny December morning, forty-two eager Swette Center students and instructors drove onto Oasis Date, in the middle of the desert of Arizona, a farm lined with date palms as far as the eye could see. The farmer, Claudia, began the tour by telling us about her and Oasis Date’s history. The land Claudia oversees is massive, cut down the middle by a two-lane road. In 2014, she took offshoots from the date palms growing across the street and began propagating them.
The date harvest begins in August and goes through the end of October. The work is difficult and intensive. To ensure the trees continue to produce fruit, they need to be intentionally thinned. Initially, the crew of about 300 people hand-thinned the immature fruit, but now they utilize the “Israeli” method by cutting off the bottoms of the young date stems. This allows the palms to focus their energy on producing less dates, but the remaining dates are larger and better quality. Claudia used to utilize local labor, but it has become too difficult to find people interested, so she turned to a federal program that allows non-American citizens to work in the US on a temporary basis.
Farm labor is a constant topic in Yuma, Arizona, with agriculture producing an estimated $2.5 billion annually in the local economy. H2A visas can only be issued to temporary workers, meaning Claudia cannot secure year-round support from the same workers, despite the farm operating 365 days a year.
In early spring, Claudia and her team keep busy pollinating the date palms. Oasis Date get white pollen from male trees, dries it, and applies the pollen when the temperature is at about 68 degrees. Then, they have to de-thorn the trees by cutting huge thorns off the stems to protect workers during the fall harvest. It is best to de-thorn the trees in the spring, before the date fruit begins to grow in the way of the thorns. Often, date bunches are covered with a cloth bag to protect them from pests, which have to be carefully placed to ensure the fruit is unharmed. Ensuring that a date palm’s fruit can be effectively harvested also means that once a tree reaches 60 feet, it becomes unmanageable to safely harvest and has to be cut down. Then the process begins again with a new juvenile date palm.
This extremely manual process has led Oasis Date to implement innovative practices to limit the amount of “people power” needed to ensure their date harvest is as plentiful as possible. After Claudia spoke to us about her date farm, we met Dave, Jeff, and Amy from MyLand, a Phoenix-based soil health company serving farms across Arizona, California, Texas, and Washington. Through its Soil as a Service™, MyLand supports Oasis Date by improving soil health using live, native microalgae.
In 2024, MyLand announced a major initiative to help Arizona farmers conserve water and improve soil performance. Funded through a $3 million allocation from the Arizona Water Conservation Grant Fund (WCGF), the project is authorized by the Arizona Governor’s Office and administered by WIFA. The initiative helps growers adopt sustainable practices that improve soil health, enhance water-use efficiency, and support the long-term sustainability of Arizona agriculture.
MyLand begins by harvesting live, native microalgae directly from a farm’s soil and analyzing it in their labs to identify strains best suited to the farm’s unique soil profile. A MyLand System is then installed onsite, allowing microalgae to be delivered back into the soil through the farm’s existing irrigation lines. Because the algae originate from the land they are used to improve, they are considered native, enabling a natural and effective approach to improving soil health. MyLand Systems are remotely monitored and operated entirely by the company, reducing on-farm labor demands and allowing Claudia and the Oasis Date team to be hands-off in the process.
As labor continues to be an issue in the farming community, technology may play a role in alleviating farmers. However, many tasks are too intricate to fathom entrusting to a robot or remote worker. Oasis Date is working hard to find the balance, all while growing delicious fruit!
This blog is part of a series from the Swette Center's annual Arizona Food and Farm Immersion, a required course in their two graduate programs. Students tour the state, meeting with farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, government staff, and non-profit leaders.