Query USDA ERS Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) farm income and financial data programmatically via the ARMS Data API.
domain: ers.usda.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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Steps
Register for a free API key via the api.data.gov-backed signup form on the ARMS Data API page.
Call GET https://api.ers.usda.gov/data/arms/report or /arms/variable to discover available reports (e.g., Farm Business Balance Sheet) and their variables.
Call GET or POST https://api.ers.usda.gov/data/arms/surveydata with the required year plus report or variable parameters (and optional state/category filters) to retrieve survey data.
For multi-value fields in GET requests, separate values with commas and multi-word field names with plus signs.
Alternatively, use the GraphQL endpoint at https://api.ers.usda.gov/data/arms/graphql for more advanced/aggregated queries.
Known gotchas
The year parameter plus at least one of report or variable is required on /arms/surveydata; omitting both returns an incomplete/invalid query.
This is a government statistical survey API: definitions of farm typology/region categories can be revised across years, so validate category IDs against /arms/category rather than assuming stability.
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