Data Sources & Methodology
Primary source
All 8,863 farmers markets in our directory come from the USDA Local Food Portal, a free public dataset maintained by the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service.
Download the dataset
Everything below is CC BY 4.0 — free to use, share, and build on with attribution ("Harvestly Markets, derived from USDA Local Food Portal data").
- Record-level dataset — all 8,863 markets (name, location, coordinates, website, season, SNAP/organic and other attributes): CSV · JSON
- State-level aggregates (market/CSA/farm-stand counts, SNAP, organic, and website coverage by state): CSV · JSON
- Archived, citable version: Zenodo — DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21247900
- Mirrors: Hugging Face · Kaggle · GitHub
The record-level files exclude scraped third-party content (which we can't relicense) and personal contact names/emails. Files regenerate with every directory rebuild; the Zenodo archive is versioned snapshots.
How we use it
We pull two USDA endpoints and merge them:
- Bulk directory download — gives us the complete universe of markets, plus rich attribute data (SNAP/EBT acceptance, accepted payment methods, organic certification status, on-site offerings).
- Live API — overlays per-market contact info, social media URLs, season descriptions, and product lists.
Where both sources have the same field, the live API wins because it's typically fresher. About 80% of markets in our directory have full live enrichment.
Refresh cadence
The directory rebuilds from the USDA's data on a weekly schedule. Individual market profiles update when the USDA refreshes them — which can range from monthly to years, depending on how often the local market manager submits updates to USDA. Beyond the USDA feed, we also hand-research individual listings for real season, hours, products, and contacts — see the recently updated listings.
What this means for you
Addresses and locations are reliable — once a market registers with USDA, its location rarely changes. Lat/lng coordinates are sourced from USDA directly.
Hours and seasonal dates can drift. Many markets update their USDA listing infrequently. Before planning a trip, we recommend calling ahead or checking the market's own website (when available) for current operating hours.
SNAP/EBT acceptance is generally stable. Markets that participate tend to maintain it; markets that don't rarely add it without promoting the change.
Field coverage statistics
Below is the per-field coverage across our 8,863 markets as of the last directory rebuild (July 14, 2026). These numbers reflect what we serve and what's in the record-level download above — USDA data plus our cleaning, dead-link stripping, and website backfill.
| Field | Coverage | Markets | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lat/lng coordinates | 98.7% | 8,752 | Used for geo-nearest fallback + per-market maps |
| ZIP code on record | 92.2% | 8,169 | Powers /zip/<ZIP>/ lookup pages |
| Phone number | 76.8% | 6,805 | Normalized to E.164 in schema markup |
| Website URL | 50% | 4,431 | After dead-link stripping; includes our backfill from live API + state sources |
| Season / operating dates | 37.2% | 3,300 | Free-text from USDA — hours may have changed |
| Accepts SNAP | 7.3% | 646 | Self-reported to USDA; cross-listed in /snap-ebt/ |
| USDA-certified organic vendors | 12% | 1,063 | At least one certified organic vendor on site |
Reuse this data
Our statistics and record-level data are free to cite and reuse with attribution (CC BY 4.0) — download them above, browse the statistics hub, or grab a ready-made chart from the embed page. For the full annual analysis built on this data — including the 2025–2026 policy changes and where the official count record ends — read The State of U.S. Farmers Markets 2026.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the USDA AMS team for maintaining the Local Food Portal and exposing it as public data. The market directory is a public-good resource for U.S. food access; we're glad to help surface it.