Defending champion Travis Gienger of Minnesota won top prize in the 51st annual Safeway World Champion Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay on Monday.  His 2,471-pound prize gourd came just 8 pounds shy of his world record win in 2023. 

“It takes a lot of good soil biology, good soil health and a lot of work in the beginning to get it this big,“ said Gienger, referring to the hoop-house tent he puts over the pumpkin to get it growing early in Nowthen, Minnesota.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.