USDA ERS ARMS Data API
USDA ERS ARMS Data API
USDA ERS exposes Agricultural Resource Management Survey farm financial and structural estimates through REST and GraphQL endpoints in JSON. Results can include year, State, report, farm type, category, variable, estimate, standard error and display metadata; a free API key is required.
Required Attribution:
“This product uses the ERS Data API but is not endorsed or certified by ERS.”
Coverage
The reports cover U.S. farms nationally and by available States, farm types and demographic or production categories, with category definitions spanning 1996 to the present. ERS has generally issued annual database releases, and the latest revision page lists 2023 data released in December 2024. Query caps and numeric rate limits are not stated.
Verdict
This API supplies annual farm-income, balance-sheet, debt, government-payment and structural signals for agricultural margin and solvency analysis. Estimates are survey aggregates rather than farm-level observations, and standard errors should travel with values. Releases lag the survey year and historical observations can be revised. Category definitions change across periods, including farm-typology breaks at 2012, so long time series need explicit harmonization.
Get the free weekly email
Free weekly email of newly verified free data. Unsubscribe by emailing us.
By entering your email and clicking Subscribe, you agree to receive the Signal Lab weekly email from Quantum Data Technologies Ltd., 3200-650 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 4P7, Canada (signal-lab@qdt.ai). You can unsubscribe at any time: reply "unsubscribe" to any email or write to signal-lab@qdt.ai. See our Privacy Policy.
Use in your agent
Load USDA ARMS survey estimates into pandas and Parquet. Checked against the provider's documentation on Nov 1, 2026.
Access
- Register a valid email address for a free data.gov API key and set USDA_ERS_API_KEY.
- The REST surveydata endpoint requires year plus either report or variable.
Request
curl 'https://api.ers.usda.gov/data/arms/surveydata?api_key=$USDA_ERS_API_KEY&year=2023&report=income+statement&state=all'Format
JSON response containing ARMS survey estimates and query metadata; survey rows include dimensions, values, standard errors and display precision fields.
Load into pandas and Parquet
Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.
"""USDA ARMS income-statement estimates -> pandas -> Parquet. Free API key required."""
import os
import requests
import pandas as pd
URL = "https://api.ers.usda.gov/data/arms/surveydata"
params = {
"api_key": os.environ["USDA_ERS_API_KEY"],
"year": "2023",
"state": "all",
"report": "income statement",
}
r = requests.get(URL, params=params, timeout=60)
r.raise_for_status()
payload = r.json()
rows = payload.get("data", payload)
if isinstance(rows, dict):
rows = rows.get("data", rows.get("results", []))
df = pd.DataFrame(rows)
df.to_parquet("usda_arms_income_statement_2023.parquet", index=False)
print(len(df), "ARMS estimates", len(df.columns), "columns")Not run: it needs a free API key.
Limits
- Rate limit: Not stated.
- A free data.gov API key is required.
- surveydata requires year and at least one of report or variable.
Quirks
- Keep standard-error and decimal-display fields with each estimate.
- Farm-typology labels have separate 1996–2011 and 2012-present definitions.
- Historical records can be revised in later annual database releases.
Terms and attribution
- ERS permits services that search, display, analyze, retrieve and view API data.
- Applications using the API should display ERS's specified non-endorsement notice.
Sources
- https://www.ers.usda.gov/developer/data-apis/arms-data-api: “The data in the API are available in JSON format and provide attribute-based querying.”
- https://www.ers.usda.gov/developer/data-apis/arms-data-api: “Users of the ARMS data API are required to sign up for an API key”
- https://www.ers.usda.gov/developer/data-apis/arms-data-api/updates-and-revisions: “A database update was released on December 18, 2024, containing new data from 2023 and additional data from prior years.”
- https://www.ers.usda.gov/developer/api-terms-of-service: “This product uses the ERS Data API but is not endorsed or certified by ERS.”
Information and education only. Not financial, investment, legal or tax advice. Listings can be inaccurate, incomplete or out of date and are provided "as is". Free tiers, limits and licenses belong to each provider and can change, so check the provider's own terms before you rely on them. Terms & Disclaimer