Organic market information getting easier to find

The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) recently hosted a webinar describing the various information products they have available to the public about organic food products. They currently collect data on 120 organic specialty crops.  These include reports about price and movement (volume of sales) at the shipping point (e.g. fruit warehouse), wholesale terminal market (they track markets in 13 US cities and several foreign ones), and retail (based on prices from weekly grocery ads from over 400 websites).  Wholesale price information is published daily, and a weekly specialty crops report is released.  All the data are searchable in their database. Imports of some crops can be tracked as well. Data are collected on grain, forages, and poultry (eggs, meat). Grains included both feed and food grade, as well as oilseeds like soybean. The retail price information includes side-by-side comparisons of prices for organic and conventional. Finally, data on organic dairy are also collected for milk (various sized containers), yogurt, butter, cheese, and other products. AMS now has a landing page for all the organic market information to make access much easier.