AGRICULTURE: PUMPKINS COULD BE SCARCE BY HALLOWEEN

There may be more tricks than treats during this Halloween, all because a pumpkin shortage is developing.

Some pumpkins are early, others are small, and some have rotted in the field.

"The general feeling is that the 2000 pumpkin crop is down," said David Emslie, a Missouri Agricultural Statistics Service statistician who conducted spot checks around the state. "Some retailers have purchased pumpkins from other areas."

David Diebold, who operates Diebold Orchards near Benton, Mo., has an excellent crop.

"We're harvesting right now," Diebold said. "With all the hot weather, our crop matured early this year. We usually pick until frost, but pumpkins that would be green at this time of year are just not there."

In contrast to Diebold's situation, W. Martin and Delores McNitt, pumpkin growers near Murphysboro, Ill., have a horror story.

"We planted five acres of pumpkins this year, and it didn't take but about five hours to pick the entire crop," said Mrs. McNitt. "We were hit by wet weather early on, and additional rain later brought out the cutworms. We didn't have many pumpkins."

"It would have been a lot better without those later rains," she said.

Martin McNitt, who has also been in the trucking business since a disastrous year in 1995, said pumpkins were down throughout Illinois. He said the mountains of pumpkins displays in Chicago were missing.

But the problem isn't limited to Missouri and Illinois. Fewer pumpkins are being found everywhere this year. A yearlong drought in the East followed by soaking rains has led to smaller pumpkins, and the few there are ripen earlier.

Similar problems have been reported in the Midwest.

About 65,000 to 75,000 acres of pumpkins are planted in the United States each year. The crop, normally led by producers in Illinois and Pennsylvania, is 60 to 65 percent below normal.

Mosbah Kushad, a food crop specialist for the University of Illinois, said the summer's heat spurred an outbreak of phytophthora, a fungal disease in the root system of some plants.

There are still some good pumpkins out there, he said, but the supply is going to be tight around Halloween.

Prices could reflect this.

Currently, local retail prices range from 19 to 25 cents a pound from growers to 35 to 40 cents at stores. Nationally prices range from 35 to 45 cents a pound, up from about 28 to 35 cents a year ago.