3 ms·

This is just a wild guess, but New Jersey had/has a large population of Italian immigrants and I believe eggplant is a pretty popular ingredient in Italian dish

• fedreserved 5y ago
• dfxm12 5y ago
  That would cover farms selling to local buyers (restaurants, super markets and direct to consumer), but that's a tiny part of the market. Most are going to wholesale distributors & production on this level would need more of an explanation than that. New Jersey is nicknamed the garden state for a reason. Despite it's population density, it's got a ton of farm land and grows a lot of food for the NA east coast & beyond. I'd guess that they found a niche where eggplants grow well in NJ soil/climates and probably catch more at market than other alternative crops.