Food Shortages Affect Thanksgiving Dinner
Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce should all be there for the main course, but there might be one blaring absence during dessert – pumpkin pie.
Because of poor weather throughout this year, the number of pumpkins grown is significantly lower than normal. The abnormal amount of rain made is nearly impossible for the Nestle Corporation to pick pumpkins during the year’s harvest.
This shortage of pumpkins has directly affected Nestle’s production of their Libby’s brand canned pumpkin products. It might not seem like one company’s below average pumpkin harvest would affect the desserts on thousands of dinner tables next Thursday, but Nestle is the largest supplier of canned pumpkin products in the country.
Nestle has the canned pumpkin market cornered so well that it is estimated that they are responsible for 80-90 percent of canned pumpkin available in the United States.
Part of the reason for the shortage this year is due to Nestle’s undesirable harvest in 2008. While the company did manufacture the required amount last year, they did not, however, have enough of a surplus to carry over into 2009.
Almost all of the pumpkins that appear in Nestle’s Libby’s canned pumpkins are a special strain grown in Morton, Illinois. Nestle spokesperson Roz O’Hearn said in a statement that if every pumpkin on the Morton, Illinois farm were turned into pie, it would create 90 million pastries.
The shortage of pumpkins is unique to the Nestle Corporation and the pumpkin supply to other companies has not been disrupted. So if you do have pumpkin pie for dessert on Thanksgiving, it will most likely be made from fresh pumpkins or be a brand you aren’t normally used to.
But no matter what’s in your dessert this yea or where it comes from, almost everyone can agree that having any pumpkin pie is better than no pumpkin pie at all.
