Despite wet summer, pumpkin patches ready to meet the demand for Halloween

Experts are predicting a shortage of canned pumpkin around the holiday season due to extreme rainfall that ruined crops in Illinois earlier this year. Farmers working in across 16,000 acres of farmland in Illinois – which produces 90 percent of U.S-grown pumpkins – say there will be enough pumpkins to meet demand for Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Libby’s is scheduled to ship the last of its canned pumpkin inventory to grocery stores at the beginning of November, but it does not expect to have any more in stock until the next year’s harvest.

“There’s not going to be as much product as used to be”, University of Illinois professor Mohammad Babadoost told Fox News Radio.

Jane Moran, owner of Moran’s Orchard in Neoga, has actually tried to salvage the inundated crop land by planting the pumpkins all over again, but to no avail. As Moran conceded, “When you deal with Mother Nature, you just have to take it and go on”.

In Lancaster County, owners of the Roca Berry Farm thought they’d have to buy pumpkins from other producers when they initially spotted small and rotten pumpkins on their fields. The majority comes from the area around Morton, which calls itself the “pumpkin capital of the world” and is located about 160 miles south of Chicago. Libby’s corporate and brand affairs director Roz O’Hearn said the company, which has had a central Illinois pumpkin-processing plant since 1929, is confident it will have enough pumpkin for autumn holidays.

Heavy rains caused a lot of pumpkins to rot and washed out seeds.