Since its initial release last year, USDA’s Market News mobile app has progressed and expanded its capabilities.

We started in February of 2022. And that version included our livestock and poultry reports. So that was over 800 reports containing commodities from cattle to grains etc. We came out in June of 2022 with version two and expanded that to include continent tobacco, dairy and specialty crops, be able to search commodity areas market types, the added some features where you can save your favorites, subscribe, etc, making it very easy for end users to use this application.

Agricultural Marketing Service Associate Deputy Administrator Taylor Cox says the most recent version of the app introduced this summer continues the expansion of available data and functions.

Version three expanded again for more commodities, which included organic retail market reports and international market reports.

He notes how far the availability of market news data and real time data has come in just a couple of years.

What you have is a portfolio available to you through market news or traditional report. Our traditional method would be to find those market reports on our website a couple of years ago for some of our more advanced users. We released an API which allowed them to build that technology that programming the coding to download large amounts of data. Now we have this app that continues to be expanded upon and built upon.

And how methods of data presentation, including through the market news mobile app, will appear going forward.

We’re branching into that visualization dashboarding that users will see with a new livestock auction dashboard that our Marketing News Group also released in July.

The app is available both at Apple and Android stores for download onto smart devices. And Cox says that should give producers increased access to data, especially as they work in the field, barn, pasture, ranch, or orchard.

We know they’re not always able to sit in an office and have accessibility through a desktop. So what tools like this app do is allow them to pull that cell phone out of their pocket, click on the app be able to just very easily access their favorite Market Report state very much abreast on market conditions, volumes prices, all the things that our desktop reports give you just in the convenience of having that in your hand.