Farmers’ Market API

I love getting my fruit and veggies from my local Farmer’ Market. Unfortunately, as a recent SF transplant I wasn’t sure how to find my local Farmers’ Market. A quick search led me to a USDA website which seemed to contain most of the markets in the country.

Being an open data geek, I looked for an API. Finding none, I decided to make one. To do this, I:

1. Used the “Export to Excel” function to download the whole dataset.
2. Cleaned it up in Google Refine; normalized some fields, geocoded some records, added a geojson fields.
3. Uploaded it to a free couchdb instance.
4. Added the open source geocouch-utils CouchApp (which gives you a nice map out of the box).

All of this was done in about an hour and at a cost of $0.

So if you’re a developer who also likes fresh fruit & veg, build something on it. I’ll be down on Fillmore.

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