How did pumpkins become so Instagrammable? Their market is booming, thanks in part to a series of initiatives that go far beyond the kitchen

«here are two Michael Jordans, both widely regarded as the Greatest of All Time. One is an NBA legend. The other is a pumpkin» writes The Atlantic, referring to the name given to the heaviest pumpkin in the world, which in 2023 – at 1,247 kilograms – broke the record previously held by a pumpkin grown in Italy in 2021, which had reached 1,226 kilograms. The previous record holder was a Belgian pumpkin from 2016 weighing 1,190 kilograms. Michael Jordan set the record at the Half Moon Bay Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off, a famous Californian contest that, every October since 1974, rewards the heaviest pumpkins in the world – the equivalent of the Super Bowl for pumpkin growers, comments The Atlantic. At the first edition, the winner weighed just 60 kilograms; thirty years later, the record had risen to 650 kilograms, and today growers participating in the competition aim to exceed 3,000 pounds, or over 1,300 kilograms.

Contests and events of this kind are part of a broader pumpkin-related market, which has long been thriving in the United States and beyond. In Italy, for example, especially in October, the so-called «pumpkin patches» are increasingly popular and profitable – fields decorated with pumpkins of all shapes and sizes designed for the public to visit. From the first weekends of September, farms offering this type of experience welcome a large number of visitors: among other things, you can stroll through the different areas, taste pumpkin-based dishes, buy pumpkins to carve for Halloween, and, of course, take photos and videos to share on social media. To get an idea of the scale of the phenomenon, it is enough to note that recently even Chiara Ferragni visited one of these fields, as she has done every year since 2021. The trend also involves many other countries – the same BBC, for instance, reports that in England this activity is becoming increasingly widespread.

Social media are a significant part of the growing popularity of pumpkins and the experiences associated with them. The «pumpkin patches» themselves often have installations and locations specifically designed to provide visitors with photo- or video-ready backdrops for Instagram and TikTok. The success of these trends is, in turn, explained by the growing reputation of Halloween in Europe. Although this holiday, typically American, had long been known thanks to movies and TV series, it is only in recent decades that it has been fully embraced and popularized, so that certain sub-trends – initially popular almost only in North America – have begun to spread in Europe as well.

It was starting from the Second World War, thanks to the postwar economic recovery, that Halloween became a commercial opportunity in the United States, especially for pumpkin growers – who began selling their harvest directly to consumers, cutting out intermediaries and increasing profits. The typical Halloween pumpkins – orange ones carved with scary faces – are called Jack O’Lanterns, after the Irish tradition from which they originate, and began spreading in the United States already in the 19th century. However, pumpkins are not all the same, even if they are related: they are generally called this way, but in reality there are different species – with their own shapes, sizes, and flavors. Today botanists classify five main species of the genus, some better suited for eating, others for decoration, and others still to grow to exceptional sizes, such as those used in giant pumpkin competitions.