NEOGA, Ill. — Crop experts said there should be enough pumpkins for Halloween, but supplies of canned pumpkin could be scarce by Thanksgiving.
Illinois is the country’s top pumpkin-producing state. Mohammad Babadoost is a plant pathology professor at the University of Illinois. He said “we’ll have a pumpkin for everybody” for Halloween but cautions that canned pumpkin could run low by Nov. 26’s Thanksgiving holiday. He advised to “buy it whenever it comes to the store.”
Meanwhile the large canned-pumpkin manufacturer Libby said yields could be off by as much as a third this year in Illinois, About 90 percent of the pumpkins grown in the U.S. come from within a 90-mile radius of Peoria.
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.
But, she said, “once we ship the remainder of the 2015 harvest, we’ll have no more Libby’s pumpkin to sell until harvest 2016.”
Farmers are blaming record rainfall in June for washing out crops. Jane Moran, who owns Moran Orchard in Neoga, said they replanted and it rained more, so they’re buying pumpkins at auction twice a week.