Texas pumpkin fields took a brutal hit this year, with growers in the state's top-producing region reporting yields down 30% to 40% after one of the driest summers on record. The shortfall is already reshaping how farmers and patch owners are getting their pumpkins to market ahead of Halloween.
Mark Carroll, a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension agriculture and natural resources agent for Floyd County, said the damage was severe and widespread across the region's pumpkin acreage. “We're down anywhere from 30%-40% across acres dedicated to pumpkins,” Carroll said, according to AgriLife Today. Floyd County, located northeast of Lubbock, carries the designation of the Pumpkin Capital of Texas and is home to the town of Floydada. Carroll said 2026 was the driest year he had seen in the county during his 20 years as an agent.
Texas growers planted 1,200 acres of pumpkins this year, according to the same AgriLife Today report, within a range that the Texas Farm Bureau says typically runs between 700 and 1,600 acres statewide from year to year. Normally, the state's farms produce more than 200 varieties of pumpkins, spanning jack-o'-lantern, pie and Cinderella types, per AgriLife Today's reporting. This year, irrigation alone could not rescue the crop, since growers started the season with little to no subsoil moisture to draw on.
An Early End to the Harvest
The compressed growing conditions pushed the harvest to wrap up ahead of schedule. The Texas Farm Bureau reports that harvest began in early September and ended one to two weeks early because of the low yields, while AgriLife Today's reporting attributes the early finish simply to fewer pumpkins being left to pick. USA TODAY notes that high input costs are also squeezing producers' profitability even where sales have held steady.
Price data tells a mixed story. The Texas Farm Bureau says pumpkin prices and demand in Texas have remained steady despite the lower yields. But national pricing data cited by WDBO shows the average pumpkin price climbing over time — from about $4.00 in 2020, to around $5.50 in 2023, to more than $6.20 this year — after dipping to roughly $5.99 for an extra-large pumpkin in 2025.
Drought Stretches Beyond Texas
Texas wasn't alone in feeling the squeeze this season. At Western Belle Farm, the pumpkin crop was nearly wiped out by extreme heat, according to WDBO's reporting, and the farm's co-owner, Taylor Huffman, told ABC News that the operation went without rainfall entirely. “We actually had no rainfall for 77 days,” Huffman said, per ABC News. The farm trucked in pumpkins to make up for the losses, the outlet reported.
Conditions varied widely elsewhere. ABC News also reported that pumpkin production in Southern Illinois was abundant even as parts of northern Illinois struggled with low yields and couldn't replant during the season, per WDBO. In Kansas, growers described a tough season tied to drought and said they were shipping in pumpkins and adding other attractions to compensate, according to KMUW.
Why the Air Itself Is Part of the Problem
Scientists point to a broader mechanism behind drought years like this one. Rising temperatures increase how much moisture the atmosphere demands, pulling water from streams, soils and plants in a way that can cause or worsen drought, according to Climate Central. The organization notes that the atmosphere's capacity to hold moisture grows by about 4% for every 1°F of warming, and that human-caused climate change accounted for 72% of the increase in atmospheric thirst across the western United States between 1980 and 2022. Climate models also suggest that recovery from severe drought in the West now takes one to four months longer than it did in the past, per Climate Central's research.
In Houston, one patch is pressing ahead with its season despite the regional shortfall. H Town Pumpkin Patch, at 8722 Eastex Fwy, is advertising thousands of fresh pumpkins for its 2026 season, which runs from October 9 through October 31, according to the H Town Pumpkin Patch website. Texas pumpkin prices have remained steady despite the lower-than-average harvest tied to this year's drought.
