Data Sources & Methodology | HarvestlyMarkets<br>Data Sources & Methodology<br>Primary source
All 8,863 farmers markets in our directory<br>come from the<br>USDA Local Food Portal,<br>a free public dataset maintained by the United States Department of<br>Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service.
How we use it
We pull two USDA endpoints and merge them:
Bulk directory download — gives us the complete universe<br>of markets, plus rich attribute data (SNAP/EBT acceptance, accepted<br>payment methods, organic certification status, on-site offerings).
Live API — overlays per-market contact info, social<br>media URLs, season descriptions, and product lists.
Where both sources have the same field, the live API wins because it's<br>typically fresher. About 80% of markets in our directory have full live<br>enrichment.
Refresh cadence
The directory rebuilds from the USDA's data on a weekly schedule.<br>Individual market profiles update when the USDA refreshes them — which<br>can range from monthly to years, depending on how often the local market<br>manager submits updates to USDA. Beyond the USDA feed, we also hand-research<br>individual listings for real season, hours, products, and contacts — see the<br>recently updated listings.
What this means for you<br>Addresses and locations are reliable — once a market<br>registers with USDA, its location rarely changes. Lat/lng coordinates are<br>sourced from USDA directly.
Hours and seasonal dates can drift. Many markets update<br>their USDA listing infrequently. Before planning a trip, we recommend<br>calling ahead or checking the market's own website (when available)<br>for current operating hours.
SNAP/EBT acceptance is generally stable. Markets that<br>participate tend to maintain it; markets that don't rarely add it without<br>promoting the change.
Field coverage statistics
Below is the per-field coverage across our 8,863<br>markets as of the last directory rebuild (July 11, 2026). These<br>numbers reflect the USDA dataset itself, not enrichment we add.
Field Coverage Markets Notes Lat/lng coordinates 98.7% 8,748 Used for geo-nearest fallback + per-market maps ZIP code on record 92.4% 8,189 Powers /zip// lookup pages Phone number 74.4% 6,594 Normalized to E.164 in schema markup Website URL 61.1% 5,415 Linked from market detail pages Season / operating dates 18.3% 1,622 Free-text from USDA — hours may have changed Accepts SNAP 7.1% 629 Self-reported to USDA; cross-listed in /snap-ebt/ USDA-certified organic vendors 11.6% 1,028 At least one certified organic vendor on site Reuse this data
Our aggregated statistics are free to cite and reuse with attribution<br>(CC BY 4.0) — see the statistics<br>hub for the downloadable state-by-state dataset, or grab a<br>ready-made chart from the embed page. For the<br>full annual analysis built on this data — including the 2025–2026<br>policy changes and where the official count record ends — read<br>The State of U.S.<br>Farmers Markets 2026.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the USDA AMS team for maintaining the Local Food Portal and<br>exposing it as public data. The market directory is a public-good<br>resource for U.S. food access; we're glad to help surface it.
Cite this page Free to cite and reuse with attribution (CC BY 4.0).<br>Plain Harvestly Markets (2026). Data Sources & Methodology. https://harvestlymarkets.com/data-sources/ Dataset: U.S. Farmers Markets by State 2026, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21247900. Copy<br>APA Harvestly Markets. (2026). Data Sources & Methodology. Harvestly Markets. https://harvestlymarkets.com/data-sources/ [Dataset: U.S. Farmers Markets by State 2026, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21247900] Copy<br>BibTeX @misc{harvestly_datasources_2026,<br>author = {{Harvestly Markets}},<br>title = {Data Sources & Methodology},<br>year = {2026},<br>url = {https://harvestlymarkets.com/data-sources/},<br>doi = {10.5281/zenodo.21247900},<br>note = {Dataset: U.S. Farmers Markets by State 2026. Licensed CC BY 4.0.}<br>} Copy