EU Agricultural Commodity Prices — Dairy, Cereal, Beef, Sugar

Get official EU dairy, cereal, beef and sugar market prices straight from the European Commission's Agri-food Data Portal, normalized into a single, consistent JSON schema. Optional add-on: Dutch agricultural input prices (fertilizer, fuel, electricity) via CBS StatLine.

LICENSE

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Why This Actor?

The European Commission publishes weekly/monthly agricultural market prices (dairy, cereals, beef, sugar) through the free, public Agri-food Data Portal API — but each category has its own endpoint, its own field names, and even its own number formatting (comma vs. dot decimals). Manually checking the Commission's dashboards, or writing your own integration against 4 slightly different sub-APIs, wastes time.

Existing tender/commodity actors on the Apify Store overwhelmingly use USDA (US) data sources. This actor is built specifically around the EU source, filling a gap for anyone who needs EU/NL-relevant agri-commodity prices rather than US market data.

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When should an AI agent use this?

Use this actor when a user asks an AI agent questions like:

• "What's the current EU butter and skimmed milk powder price?"
• "How has the Dutch feed wheat price at Rotterdam moved over the last few weeks?"
• "Get me this week's beef prices (young bulls, cows, heifers) for the Netherlands."
• "What's the current EU average sugar price by region?"
• "Compare Dutch fertilizer and diesel input prices to last year."
• "Set up a weekly check on EU dairy/cereal prices so I don't have to check the Commission dashboards."

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What this Actor does

• Fetches dairy (butter, WMP, SMP), cereal (feed wheat, feed maize, per market), beef (young cattle, heifers, cows, per category), sugar (EU average + regional), pigmeat, sheep & goat (lamb), olive oil, wine, and fruit & vegetable prices from the European Commission's Agri-food Data Portal.
• Normalizes all 9 categories — each with its own native field schema — into one consistent output record, including a pricePerTonne field so mass-based categories (everything except wine, which is quoted per hectoliter) are directly comparable across categories.
• Optionally adds Dutch agricultural input prices (fertilizer, fuel, electricity) from CBS StatLine table 86337NED, for a farm-cost angle alongside market output prices.
• Filters by member state (where the source supports it) and year range.
• No scraping — both sources are official, documented, authentication-free public APIs.

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Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
categories	string[]	["dairy","cereal","beef","sugar"]	Which EU Agri-food categories to fetch — also available: pigmeat, sheepAndGoat, oliveOil, wine, fruitAndVegetable
memberStates	string[]	["NL"]	ISO country codes, e.g. ["NL","BE","DE"]. Leave empty for all available. No effect on sugar (see note below)
yearFrom	integer	current year	Earliest year to fetch. Must not be greater than yearTo (rejected with a validation error)
yearTo	integer	current year	Latest year to fetch
includeCbs	boolean	false	Also fetch NL agri-input prices (fertilizer/fuel/electricity) from CBS
maxResults	integer	500	Max total price records returned (1–5000)
productFilter	string	none	Only return records whose product field contains this text (case-insensitive), e.g. "butter". Leave empty for no filter
berekenTrends	boolean	false	Add a period-over-period change field, calculated from the already-fetched period range
alertOpDrempel	boolean	false	Compare each product's price with the previous run and flag a significant change
alertDrempelPercentage	integer	5	Minimum absolute % change vs. the previous run to count as a price-alert

Note on sugar: the EU Agri-food Data Portal's sugar endpoint has no per-member-state breakdown — it only reports an EU average plus numbered regions (confirmed via live API testing). memberStates therefore has no effect on sugar results; use the market field to see the region/average instead.

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Output

Each price is pushed to the dataset as a normalized JSON object:

{
  "source": "eu_agrifood",
  "category": "dairy",
  "product": "BUTTER",
  "memberState": "NL",
  "market": null,
  "price": 375,
  "priceRaw": "€375.00",
  "unit": "100KG",
  "pricePerTonne": 3750,
  "period": "2026-06-29/2026-07-05",
  "sourceUrl": "https://agridata.ec.europa.eu/extensions/DashboardMilk/MilkProductPrices.html",
  "vorigePeriodePrice": null,
  "periodeVeranderingPercentage": null,
  "trendBeschikbaar": false,
  "vorigeRunPrice": null,
  "vorigeRunVeranderingPercentage": null,
  "priceAlertDrempelOverschreden": false
}

Fetch robustness

A failed fetch for one year/category (e.g. a temporary 5xx from the source) no longer fails the whole run — it's logged as a warning and the run continues with the remaining years/categories, so data already fetched in the same run isn't lost. If any warnings occurred, they're written to the actor's key-value store under FETCH_WARNINGS (visible in the Apify Console run's storage tab) and printed to the run log.

Trend fields (berekenTrends, optional, separately charged)

With berekenTrends: true (typically combined with a yearFrom/yearTo range spanning multiple periods), each record is compared with the previous period for the same source/category/product/member-state/market: vorigePeriodePrice and periodeVeranderingPercentage. trendBeschikbaar is true only when a previous period was actually found in the fetched range — the first period has nothing to compare against, so it stays false rather than a guessed 0%. Only records with trendBeschikbaar: true are charged the extra trend-record event.

Price alerts (alertOpDrempel, optional, separately charged)

With alertOpDrempel: true, each product's price is compared with the previous run (via the actor's key-value store): vorigeRunPrice, vorigeRunVeranderingPercentage, and priceAlertDrempelOverschreden (true when the absolute % change reaches alertDrempelPercentage, default 5). Meant for scheduled runs — you get a direct signal for products whose price moved significantly since last time, without re-checking every price yourself. Only alerted records are charged the extra price-alert event.

Alert streaks (trackAlertStreak, optional, separately charged)

With alertOpDrempel: true and trackAlertStreak: true, each group also gets alertStreak (the number of consecutive runs, including this one, that crossed the threshold in the same direction) and alertStreakRichting ("omhoog"/"omlaag"/null). A single one-off price spike looks the same as before (alertStreak: 1), but a sustained trend across multiple scheduled runs is now visible directly instead of requiring you to compare runs yourself. The extra alert-streak-signaal event is only charged once a streak of 2 or more is actually detected.

Farm-margin indicator (berekenMargeIndicator, optional, separately charged)

With berekenMargeIndicator: true (requires both a dairy category and includeCbs: true), one extra dataset item is added at the end of the run — the ratio of the average EU dairy price to the CBS fertilizer price ("Kunstmest"), a rough farm-margin proxy:

{
  "type": "marge-indicator",
  "jaar": "2026",
  "gemiddeldeMelkprijs": 350,
  "melkprijsEenheid": "100KG",
  "kunstmestPrijs": 50,
  "kunstmestEenheid": "",
  "ratio": 7
}

Only added (and charged as the new margin-record event) when both a dairy price and a CBS fertilizer price are actually available in the same run — otherwise there's nothing to compare and no record is produced.

A cereal example (with a market field, which dairy/beef don't have):

{
  "source": "eu_agrifood",
  "category": "cereal",
  "product": "Feed wheat",
  "memberState": "NL",
  "market": "National Average",
  "price": 216.5,
  "priceRaw": "€216,50",
  "unit": "TONNES",
  "period": "2026-06-29/2026-07-05",
  "sourceUrl": "https://agridata.ec.europa.eu/extensions/DashboardCereals/CerealsPrices.html"
}

Field Reference

Field	Type	Description
source	string	"eu_agrifood" or "cbs"
category	string	"dairy", "cereal", "beef", "sugar", "pigmeat", "sheepAndGoat", "oliveOil", "wine", "fruitAndVegetable" or "input" (CBS only)
product	string	Product/category name, e.g. "BUTTER", "Feed wheat", "Young cattle", "Elektriciteit"
memberState	string | null	ISO country code. Always null for sugar and non-NL CBS rows aren't fetched
market	string | null	Market/region name where the source has one (cereal markets, sugar regions, olive oil/fruit-veg markets). null otherwise
price	number | null	Parsed numeric price. null if the source value couldn't be parsed
priceRaw	string	The original price string as returned by the source, e.g. "€216,50"
unit	string	Price unit, e.g. "100KG", "TONNES", "€/100Kg"
pricePerTonne	number | null	Price converted to a fixed per-tonne basis, so mass-based categories are directly comparable. null when the unit isn't mass-based (e.g. wine per hectoliter) or unrecognized — never a guess
period	string	ISO date range ("YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD"), ISO month ("YYYY-MM", sugar) or year ("YYYY", CBS)
sourceUrl	string	Link to the relevant European Commission dashboard or CBS StatLine table
alertStreak	number | null	Only with trackAlertStreak: consecutive same-direction threshold crossings, including this run. null when the feature is off
alertStreakRichting	string | null	"omhoog"/"omlaag"/null — direction of the active streak

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Use cases

• Agricultural procurement / trading: track weekly EU dairy, cereal and beef prices without manually checking Commission dashboards.
• Farm cost monitoring (NL): combine market output prices with CBS input cost data (includeCbs: true) to track margin pressure.
• Market research / journalism: quote official EU price benchmarks in reports.
• AI agents / MCP tooling: structured price data as context for market-analysis or procurement-advisory agents.

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Pricing

This Actor uses Apify's Pay-Per-Event (PPE) pricing model.

• Actor Start: $0.00005 (Apify default)
• price-record: $0.004 per price record returned
• trend-record: $0.008 extra, only with berekenTrends enabled and only when a previous-period comparison was actually found
• price-alert: $0.015 extra, only with alertOpDrempel enabled and only when the price change vs. the previous run reaches the threshold
• alert-streak-signaal: $0.01 extra, only with alertOpDrempel + trackAlertStreak enabled and only when a same-direction streak of 2 or more runs is actually detected
• margin-record: $0.006, only with berekenMargeIndicator enabled and only when both a dairy price and a CBS fertilizer price are available in the same run

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Legal

• EU Agri-food Data Portal: official European Commission (DG AGRI) service, explicitly built and documented as a public API for reuse of market data. No authentication or scraping involved.
• CBS StatLine: official Dutch government open data (OData), same reuse policy as other Dutch government sources.
• No personal data is processed — all data is aggregate market/region-level pricing, not individual businesses or people.

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FAQ

How fresh is the data? The EU Agri-food Data Portal publishes dairy/beef weekly and cereal/sugar monthly-to-weekly depending on category. Every run fetches live from the source — there is no caching layer.

Why is memberState sometimes null? The sugar endpoint reports an EU average plus numbered regions, not a per-country breakdown — this is a limitation of the source API itself, confirmed via live testing, not a bug in this actor.

What does includeCbs add? Dutch agricultural input prices (fertilizer, fuel, electricity) from CBS StatLine table 86337NED, useful for a farm-cost angle alongside the EU market output prices. Only the most recent annual figures are returned (this CBS table publishes yearly, not real-time).

Are there rate limits? Neither source publishes explicit rate-limit headers. This actor adds a small delay between requests to the EU Agri-food API as a conservative precaution.

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Related Actors

Also by this developer:

• Shopify Product & Price Monitor — same profile: a change-detection price-monitoring feed with alert thresholding, for Shopify store products instead of EU agricultural commodities.

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Keywords

agriculture, agri, commodity-prices, dairy, cereal, beef, sugar, pigmeat, sheep, goat, olive oil, wine, fruit, vegetable, eu-open-data, cbs, netherlands, farming, market-data

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Changelog

0.5.0

• Added trackAlertStreak: signals when a group crosses the price-alert threshold in the same direction across multiple consecutive runs (alertStreak/alertStreakRichting), instead of only a single-run alert. New charged event alert-streak-signaal ($0.01), only when a streak of 2 or more is detected. Confirmed by the user (2026-07-16).
• Added berekenMargeIndicator: a farm-margin-indicator dataset item (ratio of average EU dairy price to CBS fertilizer price). New charged event margin-record ($0.006), only when both source prices are available in the same run. Confirmed by the user (2026-07-16).

0.4.0

• Added 5 new EU Agri-food categories: pigmeat, sheepAndGoat, oliveOil, wine, fruitAndVegetable — same normalization pattern as the existing 4 categories. No pricing change.
• Added a pricePerTonne output field: a fixed conversion table normalizes mass-based units (100KG, KG, TONNES) to a per-tonne basis so categories with different native units are directly comparable. null for non-mass-based units (e.g. wine per hectoliter) — never a guessed value. Applied to EU Agri-food and CBS records alike. No pricing change.
• Added a Zod validation rejecting yearFrom > yearTo, which previously silently returned 0 EU Agri-food records with no explanation.
• A failed fetch for one year/category no longer fails the whole run: the error is logged as a warning (written to the key-value store under FETCH_WARNINGS) and the run continues with the remaining years/categories, so already-fetched data in the same run isn't lost.

0.3.1 - Bugfix

• Fixed price-alert never firing across scheduled runs: the actor was reading/writing its snapshot to Apify's per-Run default key-value store, which is not shared between separate runs — so the "previous run" comparison always came back empty. Now uses a named, persistent key-value store. If you use alertOpDrempel, a new baseline will be captured on the next run.

0.3.0

• Added berekenTrends: period-over-period % change, calculated from the fetched period range. New charged event trend-record ($0.008).
• Added alertOpDrempel/alertDrempelPercentage: compares each product's price with the previous run and flags a significant change. New charged event price-alert ($0.015).
• Both confirmed by the user (2026-07-14, see docs/actor-verbeteringen/PRIJSBESLISSINGEN.md).

0.2.0

• Added productFilter (case-insensitive substring match on the product field) so users can request e.g. only butter prices instead of the full dairy category. No pricing change.

0.1.0

• Initial release: dairy, cereal, beef, sugar from the EU Agri-food Data Portal, optional CBS Landbouwprijzen (input costs) add-on.