Product Attribute and Naming Guidelines

Product description and naming conventions in local food systems has perhaps the most obvious need for more consistency, as such the data guidelines begin with guidelines for product naming and attributes. The most essential element of product naming guidelines is the order in which elements of the product name are organized if they are not captured in separate fields. As such, product name information should begin with the main commodity category (tomatoes, apples, leafy greens), followed by the product variety (Roma, Aurora, Mustard greens) and then the grade. Next, any relevant agricultural practices or certifications may be noted. Agricultural practices and certifications may include items such as vine-ripened, hot house grown, USDA Organic, Minority-owned business, state or regional certifications, or environmental certifications.

These attributes may be recorded in separate fields or after a comma. To maintain the data structure for aggregation of product information fields should not be left empty, if there is no data for any attribute a placeholder “0” should be utilized.

Standardizing the order of product names and attributes is essential to making data easily transferable across businesses, and substantially reduces the amount of data cleaning required to aggregate and analyze data from multiple sources. If consistent ordering is adopted across regional food system businesses it will simplify data management for food hubs and other local and regional food aggregators while also making it for easier for individual producers to interface with existing grocery, food service, and other wholesale purchasing systems.

The product description fields are arranged as follows:

To further identify specific products the user may decide to include product codes such as PLUs, GS1 brick codes, or an internal code created by the seller.



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.