SOLUTION · WEB SCRAPING AND DATA EXTRACTION
Automated agricultural price tracking from public sources
Automated agricultural price tracking downloads the prices published by public sources every day — such as USDA's Market News terminal-market reports in the United States or Mexico's SNIIM — organizes them by commodity, pack and market, keeps the history and alerts you when a price crosses the threshold you care about. I build these tools for growers, shippers and buyers, especially those moving produce between Mexico and the US.
What’s happening today
In agriculture, selling a week earlier or later can change the outcome of the season. Fruit and vegetable prices move with weather, harvest volume in other regions and demand, and they're published by public sources: USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service reports terminal-market and shipping-point prices across the US, and Mexico's SNIIM publishes wholesale prices for its central markets. The information exists and it's free; the problem is using it.
Checking those sources by hand isn't practical: you have to open several pages, pick commodity, market and date, and copy tables that come in different formats and pack sizes (25-pound cartons, bins, tons, boxes). If someone on the team does it, it's the first task abandoned at harvest time, exactly when it's needed most.
Without your own history, it's hard to compare against previous seasons or catch a trend early. Decisions about when to harvest, store, sell or move product to another market end up being made on a buyer's phone call or the rumor of the day, which doesn't always match what market data shows.
Automating the lookup puts the data in order by commodity, grade, origin and market, ready to analyze or share with the team. Combined with your own data — production cost, expected volume, freight — it becomes a decision tool, not just a table.
How I’d solve it
- 01
Identify reliable sources
We select the public sources that matter for your crops and markets — for example USDA Market News for US terminal markets and shipping points, and SNIIM for Mexican central markets — and review their terms of use, publishing frequency and download or API options. Where an official API or data download exists, I use it instead of scraping.
- 02
Collection and normalization
A scheduled process pulls prices every day, converts units and packs to a common price per pound or kilogram, keeps grade and origin, and stores each record with its date. If a source doesn't publish on a given day or changes its format, the system detects it and alerts you.
- 03
History and comparisons
With history in place, prices are compared against last week, the same period last year and across markets. You can see whether one market consistently pays more for your product and whether the trend is up or down.
- 04
Dashboard and alerts
A simple dashboard, usable on a phone in the field, shows the evolution by commodity and market. Alerts go out by email or message when the price crosses the thresholds you set, for example your production cost plus a minimum margin.
- 05
Tie-in with your operation (optional)
If you have cost, volume or sales data in a usable format, it can be crossed with market prices to estimate margins by market and by week, and to support planning for next season.
Example: tracking tomatoes and peppers for a shipper
- Every morning, the system pulls published prices for Roma tomatoes and bell peppers in the chosen markets.
- It normalizes packs to a price per pound and keeps grade and origin.
- It stores the history and compares it with last week and the same week last season.
- It detects that one market has paid more than the others for five days in a row.
- It sends an alert because the price crossed the company's selling threshold.
- The team checks the dashboard on their phones and decides where to send the next shipment.
Related work
Go deeper
Frequently asked questions
Where do agricultural prices come from?
From public sources that publish market prices. In the US, USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service runs Market News, with terminal-market, shipping-point and other reports for fruits, vegetables and many other commodities. In Mexico, the main source is SNIIM, which reports wholesale prices in central markets with grade and origin. Before building, we review which sources cover your products and how often they update.
Why not just check the reports directly?
You can, and for an occasional lookup that's enough. Automation pays off when you follow several commodities and markets every day, when you need your own history to compare seasons, or when you want alerts without relying on someone remembering to check. The value is having the data organized and comparable without manual work.
Are terminal-market prices what I'll actually get paid?
Not necessarily. They're wholesale prices at the point of sale, and freight, commissions, shrink and grade differences still need to come off. That's why crossing them with your costs is useful: the system helps you see trends and differences between markets, but the negotiation is still yours.
Can it be combined with data from my own operation?
Yes. You can cross prices with your production costs, harvest volumes or sales to evaluate margins by market and by week, as long as that data is in a usable format, such as a well-organized spreadsheet or a system with exports.
What drives the cost?
The number of sources and their format (website, tables, files, API), the number of commodities and markets, update frequency, and whether you need a dashboard, alerts or just periodic exports. Tracking a few commodities from one source with a weekly report is a small project.
This solution is part of my web scraping and data extraction service.
Want to talk it through?
If your situation sounds similar, tell me how you work today. I’ll tell you which part is worth automating or building first.