Comment by jjmellon

The article's profit calculations assume that every pumpkin grown can be sold. If you take a drive in the countryside today (last day of sale before Hallowe'en), you'll see this is not the case. Huge piles of pumpkins still at the farm stores, and fields full of unharvested pumpkins. I believe the likely explanation for pumpkin patch economics is that pumpkins serve as a loss leader to attract customers to a farm store.