With Halloween just weeks away, you might be searching for the perfect pumpkin to carve.
Ag educator with the University of Illinois says that the state is not just leading the nation in your front porch favorite, but in another type of pumpkin as well.
According to Nathan Johanning, “Illinois leads that, not only within Jack O’Lanterns, but also within the realm of processing pumpkins. Actually, the majority of the processing pumpkins that you get, say a can for your favorite pie, bread, or whatever, it is probably Illinois-grown. I think, as far as the actual different varieties of pumpkins, especially when we get into the small stuff and then all the different colors and things, there’s probably well over 200 different varieties of pumpkins, and that’s just a very loose estimate. I haven’t taken an account, but there are a lot more varieties than what the average person realizes.”
He says that it is the perfect storm of conditions that makes Illinois a top pumpkin producer.
“There are multiple factors, I think. One, on the processing side, a lot of that is driven by where the processing facilities are, so that there’s some in the Peoria area in Northern Illinois, north central Illinois, there are some areas of processing, so they try to source, obviously, pumpkins fairly close to that due to freight and shipping constraints. However, overall, the reason this area was kind of developed into pumpkind production and many other Midwest states is that we have fairly ideal conditions.”
Nathan says that Illinois raises about 80% of the nation’s pumpkins.
