USDA NASS — Agricultural Statistics

The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. Crop production, livestock inventory, prices, planted/harvested acres, yields — the official US agricultural data. State and county level for major commodities. Free, no auth (light rate limit).

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1394+ live data sources.

Why this matters for AI agents

For agricultural commodity questions — supply outlook, price trends, regional production — NASS is the authoritative source. Used by USDA's own analysts, commodity traders, and agribusiness. Pair with BLS for ag wages/PPI and Comtrade for global trade flows.

Common flows:

• Production estimates. "What's the corn production forecast?" → nass_query({commodity: "CORN", agg_level: "NATIONAL"}) → annual and monthly forecasts.

• State-level breakdown. Same query with state: "IOWA" for state-specific.

• Livestock inventory. "How many cattle in Texas?" → nass_query({commodity: "CATTLE", state: "TEXAS"}).

• Prices. Average farm-gate prices by commodity and time period.

Used by the agricultural_commodity_brief recipe.

Related MCP server: USDA MCP Server

Auth

NASS Quickstats requires a free API key from https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/api. Pass via _apiKey. Without a key, calls fail; with one, generous limits.

Major commodities tracked

Field crops: corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, sorghum, barley, oats, peanuts, sugar.

Livestock: cattle (calves, steers, dairy), hogs, sheep, poultry (broilers, layers, turkeys).

Specialty: vegetables (potatoes, tomatoes), fruit (apples, citrus), tree nuts, ornamentals.

Use exact USDA commodity names — the API is finicky about spelling and capitalization.

Update cadence

The crop-progress reports are the highest-frequency signal.

Common pitfalls

• Year-over-year confusion in monthly reports. Mid-season Crop Production reports give a current-year forecast revised monthly. Compare to prior year, not to last month's forecast.

• Yield vs. production. Yield is per-acre (e.g., bushels/acre). Production is total (yield × harvested acres). They tell different stories.

• NASS isn't WASDE. The World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) is a separate USDA report that synthesizes NASS + global data with supply/demand forecasts. For "outlook" questions, you may want WASDE.

• State-level data sparser for minor crops. Detailed state-level coverage is best for top-producing states. Smaller producers may aggregate to "Other states" or have suppressed data.

• Imperial units. Bushels, pounds, head, acres. Comtrade uses kilograms — convert when cross-referencing.

• Reference period. Cattle reports are point-in-time (January 1 inventory); crop reports often cover marketing year (varies by crop). Read the metadata.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nass": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/nass/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway for access to all 1394+ data sources:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Nass data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides

• pipeworx.io

License

MIT