Sources & Methodology

Why this page exists

Serious market references lead with methodology. Price assessors publish their assessment rules; index providers publish their construction documents; statistical agencies publish their metadata. medjool.food follows the same discipline from day one, at a scale honest to its stage.

This page classifies every data surface on the terminal, discloses every model in full, states plainly which figures are estimates, and defines the sourcing rules that govern our editorial wire. Where a number is modeled, we say so and show the formula. Where a number is an estimate, we say so and give the band. Where no authoritative data exists anywhere in the world — which, for variety-level Medjool statistics, is the case — we say that too, and explain what we are building to fix it.

Four tiers, every surface classified

Each data surface on the terminal belongs to exactly one provenance tier:

The Medjool Price Index, disclosed in full

02.1 · What MPX is — and is not

MPX v1 is a deterministic indicative model, not a survey and not a transaction record. Its purpose is to give the trade a coherent, internally consistent reference curve for orders of magnitude, seasonality and origin spreads — while the contributor-verified assessment (§02.4) is built. Every parameter is fixed, published below, and reproducible: anyone can recompute any point on any curve from this page alone.

02.2 · The formula

02.3 · The parameters (complete)

Anchor prices — expert-assessed FOB USD/kg for Jumbo grade, fixed at this revision:

Grade multipliers (applied to the Jumbo anchor):

Seasonal factors — monthly, reflecting Ramadan-era demand and the northern-harvest supply dip; southern-hemisphere curves are phase-shifted six months:

Anchors and trends were set by editorial judgment against publicly circulating trade indications at first publication. They are reviewed at each revision of this document and never changed silently — every recalibration is entered in the log (§08).

02.4 · Evolution roadmap: modeled → assessed → transacted

Packers, traders and buyers who wish to join the v2 panel can submit through the Request Desk. Founding contributors will be acknowledged (or kept anonymous) at their choice.

Estimates in a world without official numbers

03.1 · How the monitor figures are built

Monitor values are triangulated industry estimates assembled from three source families: statements and publications of producer and exporter associations; disclosures by packers and marketers; and reporting in the specialist trade press. Where these disagree — they often do — we publish a central figure and treat the disagreement as the uncertainty band.

• Uncertainty band: ±25% on every origin-level figure, wider where sourcing is thinnest.
• Aggregate context: the variety is widely cited at roughly a quarter of world date export trade by value share dynamics, while remaining a small share of total date volume — an outsized share of value.
• Revision cadence: reviewed annually after both hemispheres complete harvest, and on material events; every change is logged (§08).

03.2 · The fix under construction

The contributor-verified dataset — the same panel infrastructure as MPX v2 — is designed to replace triangulation with reported pack-out and shipment volumes, under the same confidentiality and threshold rules as §02.4. The first platform to assemble that dataset becomes the category's source of record; that is the explicit objective.

The harmonized grading reference

04.1 · Status and antecedents

MF-STD v1.0 is an editorial harmonization — a single, coherent reference distilled from conventions the trade already uses, published so that specifications can cite one document instead of a dozen private packer sheets. It is informed by, and designed to be compatible with, the sizing-by-weight logic of prevailing export-market practice and the framework of public standards for dates, including Codex Alimentarius CXS 143-1985 (Standard for Dates) and UNECE DDP-08 (whole dried dates).

It is a de facto reference offered freely to the trade — free to adopt with attribution, and not a legal warranty. Where market conventions diverge (they do, slightly, by destination and packer), the divergences are documented in the standard's open annex rather than hidden.

04.2 · Core size bands (single-fruit weight)

04.3 · Change control

The standard is versioned. Amendments are proposed publicly, commented via hello@medjool.food, and released as numbered versions with a change note. Specifications citing "Graded per MF-STD v1.0 (medjool.food)" remain pinned to the version they cite.

Assumptions behind every tool

All calculator inputs on the terminal are editable — the defaults below are starting points, not findings. Replace them with your own numbers and the arithmetic is yours.

05.1 · Container loadout calculator — T2

Built on standard reefer logistics: a 40-foot high-cube reefer plan, trade-conventional carton formats (5 kg and 10 kg bulk), user-set cartons per layer, layers per pallet and pallet count (capped at 24 positions). Gross weight is computed as net × 1.08, i.e. an 8% packaging tare allowance. Value uses whatever $/kg FOB the user enters; the pre-filled price is the MPX model blend anchor and inherits all of §02's limitations.

05.2 · Plantation investment modeler — T3

A 15-year cashflow on the standard Medjool establishment curve. The yield ramp, as a share of mature yield per palm:

Default inputs (density, capex per planted palm, opex per hectare, mature yield per palm, farm-gate price) are editorial judgment reflecting commonly discussed ranges for commercial Medjool development; real projects vary widely with geography, water, labor and management. Outputs are illustrative and are not investment advice, a forecast, or an offer of any kind.

05.3 · Irrigation water planner — T3

A planning-grade model in the spirit of the FAO crop-coefficient approach (FAO Irrigation & Drainage Paper No. 56): peak mature-palm demand presets of 200 / 160 / 120 litres per palm per day for hyper-arid, arid and semi-arid zones respectively; annual average taken as 70% of peak; divided by delivery-system efficiency (drip default 90%). It is a sizing aid — actual requirements must be engineered locally from site evapotranspiration, soil and water quality data.

05.4 · Season clock & harvest calendar — T2

Grounded in established date-palm phenology: the Khalal → Rutab → Tamar ripening sequence, northern-hemisphere harvest concentrated August–October and southern-hemisphere harvest February–April, with origin-level timing drawn from producer-association and agricultural-extension publications.

05.5 · Carbon stock estimator — T7

T7 estimates the carbon standing in a date-palm grove — held both in the palms’ biomass and in the soil organic carbon that accumulates beneath the canopy — and expresses it as CO₂ equivalent. It offers two independent routes to the same quantity, which cross-check to within roughly 5% on the source dataset. As with every tool here, the defaults are starting points; the arithmetic is the reader’s once the inputs are their own.

Route A — by age class. Grove counts are divided into three maturity classes and multiplied by published per-palm carbon means (kilograms of carbon per palm):

Route B — by field survey. Where crown diameter (CD) and clear-trunk height (Ht) have been measured, per-palm carbon is derived from the study’s allometric equations rather than class means:

The below-ground-to-above-ground biomass ratio R_bgb is applied by inferred stage — 0.332 young, 0.925 medium, 0.496 mature — and 44/12 (≈ 3.667) is the carbon-to-CO₂ molecular-mass conversion. The reported equations carry coefficients of determination of R² 0.83–0.95. The car-equivalence readout divides annual CO₂e by 4.6 tonnes, the US EPA estimate for a typical passenger vehicle.

The coefficients, allometry and emirate-scale validation (a satellite census of 8.97 million palms totalling approximately 2.45 million tonnes of carbon) are drawn from Dahy, B.S. (2023), Date Palm and Carbon Footprint: A Geospatial Approach to Understanding the Desert Ecosystems — A Case Study from the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, Khalifa International Award for Date Palm & Agricultural Innovation (ISBN 978-9948-777-86-1). It is used here under editorial judgment as the best available peer-reviewed basis for arid-land date-palm carbon.

Rules of the wire

The Medjool Wire ticker, the intelligence cards and The Medjool Brief are editorial products, drafted with AI assistance under human-set rules and published on a weekly cadence. Effective this revision, they are governed by the following sourcing policy:

• Every external factual claim carries a source. Crop conditions, weather, freight, regulation, tenders, retail movements, company news — each such item must trace to a verifiable public source, named in the item or in the Brief's sources section. No source, no publication.
• Model numbers are labeled. The only unsourced figures permitted are outputs of our own published models (§02), and they carry the label MPX MODEL wherever they appear.
• No invented specifics. No unnamed indices, unattributed percentages, or "field reports say" without a report. Where nothing verifiable exists on a topic that matters, we publish a watch item framed as an open question — or nothing.
• Facts vs. expectations. Forecasts and opinions are attributed to whoever holds them and are never presented as observed fact.
• Corrections. Errors are corrected visibly, not silently. Report anything to hello@medjool.food; material corrections are noted in the next Brief and in the log (§08).

Who this platform answers to

medjool.food is an independent industry resource. It is not owned, controlled or directed by any grower, packer, trader, marketing board or national association, and it does not speak for any of them. Editorial and data decisions are made under this methodology and nothing else.

• No paid placement exists anywhere in the data, the tools, the wire or the intelligence cards.
• Directory founding seats are free. Listing confers visibility, not influence over data or editorial.
• Contributor confidentiality (§02.4) is absolute: panel participation gives no party visibility into any other party's submissions, nor any say over published values.

The log

Questions, corrections, source submissions, standard matters and panel enquiries: hello@medjool.food · verified prices: Request Desk.

CITE AS: medjool.food Sources & Methodology, Rev. 2026.07.1 — https://medjool.food/methodology