ALEXANDRIA, Ind. – About half the pumpkins grown in the U.S. are produced in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.

According to USDA, the leader again in 2022 was Illinois with 652 million pounds of pumpkins from its patches. Indiana was next at 181 million pounds.

Indiana Pumpkin Growers Association President Mikkal Hodge said he believes the Hoosier state ranks high in production because of easy access to interstate highways to reach high demand markets.

He said the state is also centrally located for reaching markets anywhere from Texas to the southeast and east coast.

“There’s a lot of ways to haul pumpkins out of Indiana,” he said.

Hodge also said the weather in Indiana is more favorable for growing pumpkins because of more comfortable late summer and early fall conditions than other areas like the south.

“They don’t like those 90-degree, high humidity days,” he said.

He said the state is not as susceptible to pumpkins contracting disease or rotting from exposure to standing water in the fields because of favorable weather and good draining soil.

Hodge, also a full-time agronomist, grows pumpkins on nearly half of his 20 acre farm in Alexandria in the central part of the state.

He also raises sweet corn, tomatoes and other produce like peppers.

Hodge said he started raising pumpkins five years ago, sensing there was enough demand locally and from outside the area to absorb his entire crop.

His goal each season is to produce 100 to 200 bins of pumpkins per acre with each bin holding anywhere from 30 to 45 pumpkins depending on the type.

Some of his pumpkins are sold at his farm stand while he transports the rest to sell at auctions statewide to buyers looking to fill a need in less productive states.

“The demand is higher I think than what we can produce in most years,” he said.

About 80 percent of pumpkins grown in Illinois are processed into pie filling and other food uses. In comparison, pumpkins from every other major growing state are used primarily for carving at Halloween and other decorative purposes during fall.

Illinois has a huge pumpkin processing plant owned by Nestle Libby in Morton, which bills itself as the “Pumpkin Capital of the World.” Seneca Foods also has a processing plant for pumpkins in Illinois at Princeville. Both plants are outside Peoria in the central part of the state.

Illinois Specialty Growers Association Executive Director Raghela Scavuzzo said Illinois has been the nation’s largest producer of pumpkins seemingly forever. “I don’t know how long exactly but it has been several decades,” she said.

Scavuzzo said climbing to the top and staying there has a lot to do with the state’s only two processors opening plants in the 1920s and, of course, quality soil.

“We’ve been growing pumpkins ever since,” she said.

She also said pumpkins are raised throughout the state but the highest percentage of them are from growers closest to the processing plants. 

California, Texas, Virginia and Michigan follow Illinois and Indiana  with anywhere from 157 million to 89 million pounds per state.

The rest of the states combined produced 917 million pounds of pumpkins, according to USDA.