Usda Crop Data Scraper

What does this actor do?

USDA Crop Data Scraper is an Apify actor that extract agricultural crop production data from USDA databases. It runs on the Apify platform and delivers structured data in JSON, CSV, or Excel formats that you can easily integrate into your workflows. For each item found, the actor extracts key data fields including commodity, state, year, production, and more. All results are stored in an Apify dataset that you can download or connect to via the Apify API.

Why use this actor?

Manually collecting this data would be extremely time-consuming and error-prone. USDA Crop Data Scraper automates the entire process, saving you hours of manual work. This actor is ideal for data analysts, researchers, marketers, and developers who need reliable, structured data. You can schedule regular runs to keep your data fresh, integrate results directly into spreadsheets or databases, and scale your data collection without any coding required. The actor handles pagination, rate limiting, and data normalization automatically.

How does it work?

This actor connects to the target website to fetch structured data directly. It processes the responses, normalizes the data into a consistent format, and stores everything in an Apify dataset. The API-based approach is fast and reliable, with built-in error handling and retry logic.

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
apiKey	string	Your USDA QuickStats API key. Get a free key at https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/api	None
commodity	string	Agricultural commodity to search for (e.g., CORN, WHEAT, SOYBEANS)	"CORN"
year	string	Year for crop data (e.g., 2023)	"2023"
state	string	Optional US state to filter results (e.g., IOWA, ILLINOIS). Leave empty for all states.	None

Output fields

Each item in the output dataset contains the following fields:

Field	Description	Format
commodity	Commodity	text
state	State	text
year	Year	text
production	Production	number
yield	Yield	number
acres	Acres	number
unit	Unit	text
source	Source	text

Example output:

{
  "commodity": "Sample Commodity",
  "state": "Sample State",
  "year": "Sample Year",
  "production": 42,
  "yield": 42,
  "acres": 42
}

Cost and performance

This actor runs with a default memory allocation of 512 MB. As an API-based actor, it is very efficient and typically costs around $0.05-0.15 in Apify platform credits per 1,000 results. A typical run completes in under 1 minute. You can reduce costs by limiting the number of results with the maxResults parameter and by scheduling runs during off-peak hours.

Tips and best practices

• Start with a small number of results to test your configuration before scaling up.
• Use the Apify scheduling feature to automate regular data collection runs.
• Export results in the format that best fits your workflow: JSON for APIs, CSV for spreadsheets, or Excel for reports.
• Connect this actor with other actors on the Apify platform for more comprehensive data pipelines.

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