By KAREN BINDER
Illinois Correspondent

CARBONDALE, Ill. — A Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde carving would serve as an appropriate description of this season’s national pumpkin harvest, especially in the top-producing state of Illinois.

The smiling Jekyll half would represent that most Illinois growers are reporting nearly bumper crops of ornamental orbs and processing pumpkins for pie mix; the frowning Hyde half stands as a testament to the inclement weather and disease that crippled much of the tastier pumpkin crop throughout the rest of the nation last year.

This means there’s a limited the supply of canned pumpkin on store shelves this season.

John Ackerman, whose 300-acre farm sits close to the Nestle-owned Libby’s pumpkin processing plant in the north-central Illinois town of Morton, sums it up best in one word: Fickle.

“It’s one of the most fickle crops there is. Vining plants tend to be more prone to disease to begin with, and cold and wet conditions can mean fungus disease and other problems. I’ve heard most crops have done well, but not so for everyone. One farm near Springfield lost 50 percent of its crop this year,” said Ackerman.
“My crop this year has been terrific, one of the best. When all is said and done, we’ll have grown close to 30,000 total, and we’re two-thirds of the way through harvesting now.”

Ackerman farms 33 acres of the smaller, tastier processing pumpkins and another 30 of the ornamental and carving variety.
About 14,000 acres of the state’s nearly 27 million acres of farmland are devoted to the gourds, which fuels the Libby’s operation to supply about 90 percent of the nation’s canned pumpkin.

Libby’s itself farms about 5,000 acres, the company stated.
“Right now the market is experiencing a gap in the need for canned pumpkin and the current availability of it in the stores,” said Bill Shoemaker, researcher at the University of Illinois Horticulture Research Center.

“This year’s crop is at the processing plant now. There may be a delay, but this year’s pumpkin crop is coming to the rescue just in time.”

UoI plant pathologist Mohammad Babadoost said interest in this year’s crop has spiked in part because of poor conditions in some areas of the country this season.

“In the past two weeks, I have had many contacts about this year’s pumpkin crop in Illinois, the Midwest and nationwide,” he said. “There may be fewer pumpkin crops in the northeastern states than expected, but to my knowledge, there is no shortage of pumpkins in the Midwest, certainly not in Illinois.

“We have had a record processing pumpkin acreage in Illinois in 2009. The only problem was that harvesting of processed pumpkin began about 10 days later than usual, due to the wet season and a delay in planting.”