Pumpkin-spice up your life

It’s Halloween, and you know what fruit or vegetable we’re going to go round and talk about today.

Whether it’s on your front step as a Jack-o’-lantern, or maybe in a pie or beverage, or some of its seeds are roasted for a snack, the pumpkin is a fall staple in Canada.

And it seems we can’t get enough of them. There were 12,865 acres planted and 12,338 acres harvested in 2022, the highest levels on record since we started tracking in 2007.

However, the bumper crop was in 2020, when there were 96 220 tonnes of marketed production of pumpkins. By 2022, production had slid to 73 603 tonnes, but that’s considerably higher than the 38 267 tonnes produced in 2007.

Lots available

Our annual food availability series estimates the amount of a particular type of food physically available in Canada for consumption on a per-capita basis. We’ve tracked fresh pumpkins and squash together since 1978, when there were 0.17 kilograms available per Canadian.

An all-time high of 3.76 kilograms were available per Canadian in 2014. By 2022, availability had dropped to 2.88 kilograms.

Sharing with the world

In 2022, Canada exported 37.2 million kilograms of pumpkins, squash and gourds, down from the all-time high of 44.6 million kilograms exported in 2020.

Monthly exports typically peak in September and October, in the midst of the fall harvest. On November 7, we will release data for September 2023.