I've got to throw a big thank you to IllinoisPolicy.org for the "8 billion pumpkin spice lattes" number, because although I knew we were one of the world's top pumpkin growing powerhouses, I didn't know we grew that many of them.

And that is billion with a B.

That’s almost one Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL) for every person on the planet, with enough left over to keep the Midwest caffeinated well into winter. You could also make around 970 million loaves of pumpkin bread or almost half a billion pumpkin pies from Illinois' yearly harvest.

Another way of putting that number into perspective would be to consider that Illinois farmers harvest roughly 500 million pounds of pumpkins each year, which is enough to fill about 375 Olympic-sized swimming pools with PSLs.

If you lined up every Il

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