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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Pumpkin shortage affects sales of pumpkin foods on campus

ciFreemanFarms

More than three months after first reports came out, this year’s pumpkin shortage is becoming known on campus.

Sugar & Spice, located on the main level of the Indiana Memorial Union, has stopped serving pumpkin bread temporarily, said Holly Hudson, regional operations manager at the IMU.

Reports came out in October advising consumers to stock up on canned pumpkin for Thanksgiving.

Heavy rain during the spring made for later planting times and a smaller overall crop.

Libby’s Pumpkin, a Nestle subsidiary that corners more than 80 percent of the canned pumpkin market across the nation, said in October although they had enough pumpkin to make it through Thanksgiving, the low harvest meant stock going into the new year would be tight.

Roz O’Hearn, Nestle’s Corporate and Brand Affairs director, said the company shipped the last bit of the 2015 pumpkin in 
mid-November.

The brand will not have any more pumpkin to sell until after the first harvest of this year.

Pumpkin bread has been unavailable in Sugar & Spice for about 10 days.

A can of pumpkin is about four times as expensive as it was in years past, given this year’s poor pumpkin crop, Hudson said.

“Instead of raising the cost of that product, we are just implementing seasonal favorites,” Hudson said.

This isn’t the first time menu items have rotated, Hudson said.

When the cost from suppliers reaches a more feasible level, the dining location plans to bring the pumpkin bread back.

Currently, Sugar & Spice is selling cherry ribbon bread to play into Valentine’s Day promotions, 
Hudson said.

Hudson said anyone who’s ordered the baked good in the last week and a half has simply ordered something else when told it’s not available.

“No one’s really missing it any more than if another menu item was removed,” Hudson said.

In November, the price of a can of Libby’s pumpkin was about $1.79. Currently, a Google search lists Walmart pricing at $2.88.

O’Hearn said in an email the midsummer rain reduced the number of pumpkins that grew on Libby’s Morton, Illinois, farm.

Early estimates by Libby’s manufacturers put the dearth at about one-third of the crop.

O’Hearn said the number was actually closer to 50 percent.

“We’ll plant seed again this spring and begin the harvest in August; 2016 pumpkin should appear in stores by late September/early October,” O’Hearn wrote. “Until then, we will not be surprised to hear of shortages reported around the country.”

Mark Freeman of Freeman Family Farms said the weather — and thus the soil — in June was “abnormally cold and wet.”

“If you put the seed in the ground and it’s cold and wet, the seed will just rot,” said Freeman, whose Bloomington farm houses a pumpkin patch.

Freeman waited about ten days past normal planting time but said the gourds would be grown by the time harvesting season came around.

Like Freeman, Noreen Dollinger, of Dollinger Family Farm in Channahon, Illinois, said the inclement weather during planting season also delayed her crop.

There are two kinds of pumpkin — canning pumpkins, which are fleshier and pale and meant to be eaten, and ornamental pumpkins, the kind typically carved into jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween, Freeman and 
Dollinger said.

Freeman and Dolliner grow the second kind of pumpkin, which means for Dollinger, “the value of a pumpkin on Nov. 1 is pretty low.”

“We had to buy pumpkins for the first couple of weeks, and the price was 25 percent higher than normal,” Dollinger said in an email. “This was mostly because people that planted at the normal time got drowned out and large spots produced nothing.”

Dollinger normally plants her crop in June but held off until July 3 — a risky move, when her pumpkins generally need 100 to 110 days to mature.

“Farmers are the biggest gamblers out there to throw their money in the ground and hope for the best,” Dollinger said. “We are planning on a great crop next year.”

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