USDA Cropland Data Layer Farmland & Siting Screener

Classifies a batch of coordinates against the USDA Cropland Data Layer (CDL) and returns, per site, the land-cover class, an active-cropland flag, and a prime-farmland proxy. Aimed at solar and wind site developers, land-use diligence teams, and ag lenders who need to know whether a candidate parcel is in active crop production before they act on it.

How it works

For each site you supply (lat/lon, WGS84), the actor projects the point into the CDL's native CONUS Albers Equal Area projection (EPSG:5070) and samples it through USDA's public CropScape GetCDLValue point service (nassgeodata.gmu.edu). No API key, no login, no scraping. The CDL is a ~30 m annual satellite crop-classification raster; the sampled pixel gives you the class code (1 = Corn, 5 = Soybeans, 176 = Grassland/Pasture, 121–124 = Developed, 141–143 = Forest, 111 = Open Water, 0 = No Data outside CONUS).

Coverage is the Contiguous US. A point in the ocean or outside CONUS returns a valid No Data row, not an error, and a single bad coordinate produces an ERROR row without failing the run. Years 2008–2025 are available; default is 2024.

Example input

{
  "assets": [
    { "lat": 42.45, "lon": -93.55, "label": "Iowa cornfield" },
    { "lat": 42.30, "lon": -94.20, "label": "Iowa soybean field" },
    { "lat": 40.75, "lon": -73.98, "label": "Manhattan, NY (developed)" }
  ],
  "year": 2024
}

Key output fields (one row per site)

• cdl_code — raw USDA CDL class code (0–255) at the point.
• land_cover_class — the human-readable name for that code (Corn, Soybeans, Developed/Medium Intensity, Deciduous Forest, and so on).
• category — coarse bucket: cropland, pasture, forest, developed, water, or other.
• is_active_cropland — true when the pixel is a cultivated crop (field/row crops, orchards, specialty and double crops; grassland/pasture, forest, developed, and water are excluded).
• prime_farmland_flag — a proxy that equals is_active_cropland; see the caveat below.
• prime_farmland_basis — how that flag was derived, in plain language.
• cdl_color — the official CDL legend hex color for map rendering.
• albers_x, albers_y — the EPSG:5070 coordinate actually sampled.
• cdl_year, source_url, citation, checked_at, error, disclaimer.

About the prime-farmland flag

The CDL does not carry the legal "prime farmland" soil classification — that lives in NRCS SSURGO as the farmlndcl attribute. So prime_farmland_flag is a transparent proxy: true when the point is in active crop production, which strongly indicates farmland but is not a substitute for an SSURGO determination. For an authoritative answer (for example, a Farmland Protection Policy Act / AD-1006 review), use NRCS Web Soil Survey / SSURGO.

Who uses it

• Solar and renewable-energy developers screening candidate parcels for active cropland or farmland-conversion sensitivity before acquisition.
• Land-use and environmental diligence teams (Phase I / ESA-adjacent) needing a fast land-cover read at many coordinates.
• Ag lenders, appraisers, and CRE analysts checking whether collateral is productive cropland.
• Farmland-protection and conservation planners flagging active-cropland parcels.
• AI agents needing a coordinate-to-land-cover lookup.

Use as an MCP tool

This is a Pay-Per-Result API with field-level output descriptions, so AI agents (Claude, Cursor, and others) can call it over mcp.apify.com as a coordinate-to-land-cover tool. Empty input costs nothing beyond the actor start.

FAQ

Is this the legal prime-farmland determination? No. It is a CDL active-cropland proxy; use NRCS SSURGO for the authoritative soil class.

Does it need an API key? No. The CropScape service is public and keyless.

What happens for an ocean or non-US point? You get a valid No Data (code 0, category other) row, not an error.

How is billing calculated? One dataset row per site.