USDA

The US Department of Agriculture provides a suite of free public REST APIs covering agricultural statistics, food and nutrition data, market news, food safety inspection records, crop and vegetation monitoring, and geospatial services. APIs are accessed through api.data.gov and agency-specific portals, all requiring a free API key.

USDA publishes 7 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network, including FDC API, and 6 more. Tagged areas include Agriculture, Food Safety, Nutrition, Statistics, and Geospatial.

The USDA catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

USDA’s developer surface includes authentication, documentation, engineering blog, pricing, and 12 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

32.4/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 21/100 agent aware Heartbeat 0/100 dormant saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreeSelf serve⚡ Free to try

1 published contract

Agriculture Food Safety Nutrition Statistics GeospatialMarket NewsFederal Government

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 32.4/100 · thin

Contract Quality 10.4 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 5.0 / 15

Access Clarity 2.8 / 15

Operational Transparency 0.5 / 10

Contract Governance 0.9 / 9

Discoverability 5.0 / 8

Regulatory Posture 2.5 / 15

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 0.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 21/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 7 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 0 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Government & Public Sector regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created. Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet, not penalised by it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document
Delegated User Identity +6 pts — a served discovery document listing authorization_code in grant_types_supported (served), else an oauth2 authorizationCode flow or openIdConnect declared in an OpenAPI (documented)

9 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Access Clarity scores 18.4 — up to +16.3 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 33.3 — up to +13.3 composite points
Operational Transparency scores 5.3 — up to +12.3 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/usda/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/usda to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
Agriculture and Food (Farm Data, Nutrition)	builds-on	17.2 (thin)	-	-
US Federal API Programs (api.data.gov, Login.gov, GSA MAS, FedRAMP)	builds-on	17.2 (thin)	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 7

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

USDA NASS Quick Stats API

Programmatic access to official US agricultural statistics from the National Agricultural Statistics Service, including crop production estimates, livestock data, and Census of ...

USDA ERS ARMS Data API

Economic Research Service API providing access to data from the Agriculture Resource Management Survey (ARMS), covering farm finances, production practices, and resource use. Re...

USDA AMS MyMarketNews MARS API

Market Analysis Reporting System (MARS) API providing programmatic access to USDA Agricultural Marketing Service commodity price and market news data including livestock, dairy,...

USDA NASS CroplandCROS API

Geospatial API serving Cropland Data Layer (CDL) and related geospatial data at 30-meter resolution covering the continental US from 2008 onward, with historical data for select...

USDA Forest Service Geospatial REST API

ArcGIS Server REST API providing access to USDA Forest Service nationwide geospatial datasets including forest boundaries, land status, fire occurrence, and ecological data layers.

USDA FSIS MPI Directory API

Food Safety and Inspection Service API providing real-time access to the Meat, Poultry and Egg Product Inspection Directory, including establishment location, size, species proc...

USDA FDC API

endpoints to retrieve nutrient data

Scroll for all 7

Open Collections 1

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Food Data Central FDC API

OPEN COLLECTION

USDA API pricing

Not yet checked against USDA's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-06-13; confirm before you rely on a figure.

Plan	Price
Free (No Key)	—
Free Registered	—
Higher Rate Limits (On Request)	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Usda Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Usda Rate Limits

0 limits

RATE LIMITS

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

USDA

SLA

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Usda Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Usda Context

7 classes · 54 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

USDA — jsonschema rules

6 rules · 4 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 1

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

FoodData Central Food Item

0 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Examples 2

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Usda Fooddata Central Food Item Example

3 fields

EXAMPLE

Usda Fooddata Central Food Search Example

3 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Usda Authentication

apiKey · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Usda Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Usda Agentic Access

9 operations · 3 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Build 2

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrg

GitHubOrg

GitHubOrg

GitHubOrg

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Authentication

Authentication

Operate 3

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

IssueTracker

IssueTracker

StatusPage

StatusPage

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Pricing

Pricing

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

Company 3

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

LinkedIn

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Source (apis.yml)

aid: usda
name: USDA
description: The US Department of Agriculture provides a suite of free public REST APIs covering agricultural statistics,
  food and nutrition data, market news, food safety inspection records, crop and vegetation monitoring, and geospatial services.
  APIs are accessed through api.data.gov and agency-specific portals, all requiring a free API key.
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  license_evidence:
    not_product:
    - usda-ree-ers/arms-data-api
  open_source: unknown
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: low
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  - repository-not-product
  generated: '2026-09-25'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  gated: none
  gated_source:
  - onboarding
  label: Free · Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/usda.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/usda/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
type: Index
tags:
- Agriculture
- Food Safety
- Nutrition
- Statistics
- Geospatial
- Market News
- Federal Government
tags_raw:
- Agriculture
- Food Safety
- Nutrition
- Statistics
- Geospatial
- Market News
- Federal Government
- Federal-Government
apis:
- name: USDA NASS Quick Stats API
  description: Programmatic access to official US agricultural statistics from the National Agricultural Statistics Service,
    including crop production estimates, livestock data, and Census of Agriculture results from 1997 onward.
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/api
  baseURL: https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/api
  tags:
  - Agricultural Statistics
  - Crops
  - Livestock
  - Census
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/api
  - type: APIKeySignup
    url: https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/api
- name: USDA ERS ARMS Data API
  description: Economic Research Service API providing access to data from the Agriculture Resource Management Survey (ARMS),
    covering farm finances, production practices, and resource use. Returns data in JSON format with attribute-based querying.
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://www.ers.usda.gov/developer/data-apis/arms-data-api
  baseURL: https://api.ers.usda.gov
  tags:
  - Farm Economics
  - Agricultural Survey
  - ARMS
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.ers.usda.gov/developer/data-apis/arms-data-api
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/USDA-REE-ERS/ARMS-Data-API
  - type: APIKeySignup
    url: https://www.ers.usda.gov/developer/data-apis
- name: USDA AMS MyMarketNews MARS API
  description: Market Analysis Reporting System (MARS) API providing programmatic access to USDA Agricultural Marketing Service
    commodity price and market news data including livestock, dairy, fruits, vegetables, and grains.
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/mymarketnews-api
  baseURL: https://marsapi.ams.usda.gov/services/v1.2
  tags:
  - Market News
  - Commodity Prices
  - Livestock
  - Agriculture Markets
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/mars-api/getting-started
  - type: APIKeySignup
    url: https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/mymarketnews-api
- name: USDA NASS CroplandCROS API
  description: Geospatial API serving Cropland Data Layer (CDL) and related geospatial data at 30-meter resolution covering
    the continental US from 2008 onward, with historical data for select states back to 1997.
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://www.nass.usda.gov/developer/index.php
  baseURL: https://nassgeodata.gmu.edu/CropScapeService
  tags:
  - Cropland
  - Geospatial
  - Remote Sensing
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.nass.usda.gov/developer/index.php
- name: USDA Forest Service Geospatial REST API
  description: ArcGIS Server REST API providing access to USDA Forest Service nationwide geospatial datasets including forest
    boundaries, land status, fire occurrence, and ecological data layers.
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://data-usfs.hub.arcgis.com/
  baseURL: https://apps.fs.usda.gov/arcx/rest/services
  tags:
  - Forest Service
  - Geospatial
  - ArcGIS
  - Fire
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/edw/mapServices.php
  - type: Portal
    url: https://data-usfs.hub.arcgis.com/
- name: USDA FSIS MPI Directory API
  description: Food Safety and Inspection Service API providing real-time access to the Meat, Poultry and Egg Product Inspection
    Directory, including establishment location, size, species processed, and inspection status for all FSIS-regulated facilities.
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/science-data/developer-resources/mpi-api
  baseURL: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/fsis/api
  tags:
  - Food Safety
  - Meat Inspection
  - Poultry
  - Public Health
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/science-data/developer-resources
- aid: usda:usda-fdc-api
  name: USDA FDC API
  description: endpoints to retrieve nutrient data
  humanURL: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/api-guide/
  baseURL: https://api.nal.usda.gov/fdc/v1
  tags:
  - FDC
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/usda-fdc-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/api-guide/
  - type: APIKeySignup
    url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/api-key-signup/
common:
- type: IssueTracker
  url: https://github.com/USDA-REE-ERS/ARMS-Data-API/issues
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/usda-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/usda-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/usda-authentication.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.usda.gov/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.ers.usda.gov/developer/
- type: GitHubOrg
  url: https://github.com/USDA
- type: GitHubOrg
  url: https://github.com/USDA-REE-ERS
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.usda.gov/media/blog
- type: Pricing
  url: https://api.data.gov/docs/developer-manual/
- type: StatusPage
  url: https://api.data.gov/status/
- type: X
  url: https://twitter.com/USDA
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/usda
- type: Plans
  url: plans/usda-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/usda-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/usda-finops.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

USDA API — frequently asked questions

Does USDA have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 7 APIs from USDA, including USDA NASS Quick Stats API, USDA ERS ARMS Data API and USDA AMS MyMarketNews MARS API, and 4 more.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the USDA API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 1 OpenAPI specification for USDA, each linked for download from this page.

How do I authenticate with the USDA API?

USDA uses bearer-token authentication (apiKey · 1 scheme). The details are profiled on APIs.io as Usda Authentication.

How much does the USDA API cost?

APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for USDA, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the USDA API ready for AI agents?

USDA has a Kin Score of 32.4 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 21.0 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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