Pumpkin picking is becoming a valuable revenue stream for British agriculture

Pumpkin picking is now big business

The scale of the opportunity was highlighted by BBC News this month in its coverage of Britain's pumpkin-picking season.

At Over Farm in Gloucestershire, farm manager Rees Keene said around 35,000 people visited during October last year, with Halloween accounting for around a third of the farm's turnover.

That puts pumpkin picking firmly beyond the territory of a few seasonal sales at the farm gate. For businesses that can attract enough visitors, October can become a significant trading period.

The pumpkin itself is only part of the revenue opportunity. Farms can build additional spend around the visit through

• Ticket sales

• Food and drink

• Farm shops

• Tractor rides and children's activities

• Seasonal events

• Decorations and merchandise

• Other pick-your-own produce

Farmers Weekly has previously reported that pumpkins can provide significant additional income when the core picking experience is combined with refreshments and attractions. At Kemps Farm in Yorkshire, for example, ticketing, tractor rides, food and drink were incorporated as the pumpkin business grew.

For farmers, that changes the value of the crop. Revenue is no longer tied solely to selling a pumpkin. It comes from creating a reason for customers to visit and spend on the farm.

Social media has fuelled the craze

Part of pumpkin picking's success is down to timing. It offers an outdoor family activity during October and half term, but it has also arrived at exactly the right moment for experience-led social media.

Pumpkin patches are highly visual. Visitors photograph the fields, displays and their chosen pumpkins, then share the experience across Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Those posts put the farm in front of another audience without the business having to reach every potential visitor itself.

The influence is increasingly visible in how attractions are designed. Farms are creating bigger displays, dedicated photography areas and more immersive experiences because the day out has become as important as the product customers take home.

This is not entirely new. Farmers Weekly reported in 2022 that the UK pumpkin market had already experienced significant growth over the previous decade as consumers increasingly looked for on-farm experiences and opportunities to buy directly from producers.

Social media has given that trend further momentum. A customer who shares their visit is not simply documenting their day out. They are also putting the farm in front of the next potential customer.

The experience is where the value grows

The growth of pumpkin picking also reflects a wider shift in what people are prepared to spend money on.

Visitors are not going to a pumpkin patch simply because they need a pumpkin. They can buy one much more quickly from a supermarket.

They are going because choosing one from a field is an experience.

For farms, that difference matters. A customer who stays for a couple of hours has far more commercial value than someone making a quick purchase at the gate. They might buy lunch, visit the farm shop, pay for an activity or discover another reason to come back later in the year.

It also creates direct contact between consumers and agriculture. For some families, a seasonal event may be one of the few occasions when they spend time on a working farm or buy directly from a producer.

Done well, pumpkin picking can therefore support more than October sales. It can introduce new customers to the wider farm business and its other products, events and attractions.

Diversification is becoming harder to ignore

Pumpkin picking sits within a much bigger change in how agricultural businesses generate income.

Farmers have diversified into everything from renewable energy and property to holiday accommodation, retail, catering and events. The common thread is the need to create additional value from the assets already available to the business.

The latest Defra data makes the scale of this shift clear. In 2024/25, 72% of farms in England had diversified activities, compared with 62% in 2015/16. For farms participating in diversification, average enterprise income from those activities reached £31,100. Read Defra's full diversification analysis.

At a national level, diversification contributed approximately £2.2 billion to UK agricultural output in 2025, according to the latest Agriculture in the United Kingdom accounts.

Pumpkin picking will only ever represent one small part of that total, but it demonstrates how creative diversification can turn a relatively simple crop into several sources of income.

There is still risk behind the pictures

A busy pumpkin patch is not guaranteed profit.

Opening a farm to thousands of visitors requires parking, staffing, toilets, payment facilities, insurance and health and safety management. Bigger attractions may also need online booking systems, traffic management, catering infrastructure and additional seasonal staff.

Competition is another consideration. As more farms enter the market, simply growing pumpkins is unlikely to be enough. The quality of the experience, location, marketing and additional offer all influence whether visitors choose one farm over another.

There is also no escaping the agricultural side of the business. Pumpkins remain a crop, which means weather, growing conditions, disease and input costs can all affect the season. This year's BBC News coverage highlighted the impact of the hot 2026 growing season, including increased irrigation requirements at Over Farm.

The commercial opportunity may have expanded, but so has the operational challenge.