Market Data Guidelines for Produce in Regional Food Systems
OVERVIEW: Market Data Guidelines for Produce in Regional Food Systems resources provide an informational framework and data guidelines to increase the consistency of naming and data conventions to aid smaller producers and producer networks in becoming “wholesale ready”. Food hubs, food hub networks, marketing coops, and other local/regional partners who adopt the suggested data structures and informational approach will simplify and improve both their internal operations and interactions with small growers and expand market accessibility to their collective product offerings, especially for institutional purchasers.
The goal of the data guidelines is to increase the consistency of data conventions for produce across the local foods sector and promote use of more standardized naming conventions and pack sizes. In doing so these materials can improve the ability of local and regional producers to participate in a broader marketplace, thus expanding both the volume of local produce and the ease of accessibility to regional products for institutional buyers. Increasing the consistency of data structures will also help make comparison and analysis of products in local markets much more feasible.
Potential benefits of more consistent information for local food systems include:
Better information for product comparisons and pricing
Improved ability to access wholesale and institutional markets, such as grocery stores, or USDA-supported commodity purchasing
programsReduction in transaction costs for collaboration between regional entities such as food hubs and coops
Easier identification as a “local” product
To work towards consistency in local product data these guidelines provide a recommended system for organizing product data. The system includes 1) product naming and attributes, 2) unit of measure, and 3) transaction and traceability information. The guidelines are designed to be used in a spreadsheet format. A template spreadsheet is provided on the project website and can be used to maintain information and generate invoices.
The guidelines were developed through a collaborative effort of growers, aggregators, and buyers that leverages existing traceability standards, naming conventions, pack sizes, and product attributes definitions in a manner appropriate for local and regional production systems.
The Market Data Guidelines for Produce in Regional Food Systems were developed through a collaboration among USDA AMS Local and Regional Food Systems, Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, and the International Center for Food Ontology Operability Data and Semantics. Funding was provided through USDA AMS Cooperative agreement #22-TMMSD-ME-0002.