Help
About Market News
How to Read a Report
- Type of Reports
- Shipping Point Report vs Terminal Report
- Common Types of Sales
- Price Trend
- Demand
- Quality
- Condition
- Appearance
- Qualifying Terms
- Organic
- Terminal Report Details
- Terminal Report Availability
- Shipping Point Report Details
- Movement Report Details
- Retail Report Details
- Report Abbreviations
- State and Country Abbreviations
- Container Net Weights
Portal Help
Frequently Asked Questions
General questions regarding the Portal:
The Portal has a lot of information available but where is the best place to start?
Custom Reports - By commodity is a good place to start because it directs you to information for terminal markets, shipping point, retail and movement for a commodity from a single page.
Where are the Market News reports I used to see several years ago?
Many of the text and composite PDF formatted reports are still available under the heading Standard Reports on the Specialty Crops Market News Home Page.
What are the advantages of having an account on the Portal?
Registered users can:
- Save bookmarks to reports that you run so you can run them again later or edit the search criteria
- Schedule reports so that they will be emailed to you daily
- Save bookmarks for graphs created from the reports
- Email reports or links to reports to people you know
How do I create an account?
On the top of the Specialty Crops home page on the right side, click on "Log in/Register" and follow the steps for a Type 1 account. More information is available from the "My Account" section under "Portal Help" in the Help Section.
What is the cost to register on the Portal?
There is no charge for registration.
I am a registered user and I logged in to the Portal. However, if I step away from my PC I no longer see my customized options when I return. What happened and what do I do?
Your portal login expires after 20 minutes of inactivity. Refresh your browser (usually the F5 key) and the "My Account" tab no longer displays at the heading to indicate you are no longer logged in. Clicked on "Log in|Register" again. Re-select "Login".
Does the Portal keep any personally identifiable information?
No personally identifiable information is kept on the Portal.
Finding information on the Portal:
I ran a report in Custom Report By Commodity and it displays information for just one day. How do I get the same information for a longer period of time?
Under the Custom Reports heading select "CUSTOM REPORT" where you can create a report by commodity by a day for up to a year and by week for up to two years.
I would like to download daily information for a terminal market all commodities for a year in "Custom Report". Why am I limited to three months?
There is a limit of three months because of the volume of data. You can, however, download information for a terminal market for all commodities for a year if you select it on a weekly basis.
I ran Custom Reports - By Report Type for Shipping Point and the Portal gave me all the information for California. I'm only interested in Raspberries. How do I view just the information for one commodity?
Select RASPBERRIES from the Refine Results area of the report header. You can also view a raspberry report from Custom Reports By Commodity and when the report displays, select "shipping Point" under "Report Type".
How do I find prices or shipments for a season or multiple seasons?
Run a Custom Report for Shipping Point or for Movement and for the Aggregate (frequency) select "Season (by Day)" or "Season (by week)". Movement reports also have an option of "Season (by month)". You can only run a report for one season. However, when specific dates are entered for a Custom report by day, week or month parts of multiple seasons may be included.
What is the easiest and fastest way to find archived text and PDF reports?
Current text and composite PDF reports are available under the heading Standard Reports on the Specialty Crops Market News Home Page. Back issues are available for five years at Market News Search, available when current standard reports are selected. You may also click on the link Market News Search at the top right side of Specialty Crops home page. For text reports enter the report code (get a sample report at Standard Reports if you do not know the code - the code is usually listed below the office phone number) and for PDF reports type in the title of the report at "Find Results". Please reference Using Market News Search for more details.
How far back can I find information on the Portal?
Portal information is available from 1998 to the present. Text reports and composite PDF reports from the past five years are available through the "Market News Search".
How can I get wholesale terminal prices for same time last year?
There are two easy ways:
1) Run a report in Custom Reports By Commodity or Custom Reports By Report Type for the current day and us the calendar
option in the report header to change the day to the corresponding date for last year.
2) Run a Custom Report for a terminal market (omit the date for the latest report) and click "Edit Query" in
the report header. Change the date for the query to the corresponding day for last year.
Where do I find truck lot shipments of a commodity, such as limes?
Run a Custom Report for Movement by Commodity (in this case, limes). Select the location, time period etc as desired. In Step 3 click on the "Refine" button (which appears next to the "Run" button) and change the "Vol. in pounds" to the desired truck load equivalent (for example, 40,000 lbs or 42,000 lbs) and then click "Run"
How do I graph a report?
Run a Custom Report for one Commodity and one Location. A Graph icon will display in the upper right corner of the report. Graphs are currently unavailable for Movement reports by day and for Monthly and Annual Market News Reports with Commerce Import Data.
How can I graph price and shipment data together on just one chart?
There are two ways: 1) Run a Custom Report for shipping point for a single location and commodity on a weekly basis. A Graph icon will display in the upper right corner of the report. On the options for the graph, select the "Show Movement Volume:" button. The volume displayed on the graph is for the total volume for the origin represented by the location selected for shipping point prices. 2) Use the Custom Average Pricing Tool (CAT) and select 'Shipping Point/Movement Graph' on a weekly or monthly basis. The price average shown is for all varieties, packages, sizes etc. and is compared to the total volume for the origin represented by the location selected for shipping point prices.
How do I find organic information on the Portal?
Organic information is displayed along with product that is not labeled as organic. You can refine a report to select only organic information to be displayed by selecting "organic" in the "Type:" option. In addition, a composite PDF formatted report which lists all organic information for a single day is available in the National Specialty Crops Organic Summary.
I ran a custom report and was able to select "Refine" which was next to the "run" button, but it is no longer there. Where can I find it?
The refine button is present on Custom Reports when you select one commodity and one location at a time. It is not available when multiple commodities and locations are selected.
More about the information on the Portal:
The season on the report is shown as 2013 but today's date is in the year 2014?
The season for a commodity begins when the new growing season starts. For example, if a commodity is first shipped beginning September, 2013 the information on the report will generally be shown as the 2013 season from September 2013 to August 2014. Some seasons are shorter than 12 months.
For Movement reports, why is there sometimes a "0" in the 10,000 lb unit column for a commodity?
The zero signifies an amount which is less than 5,000 lbs. In Custom Reports you can get the exact weight if you run a report for a single commodity and then refine your search, change the "volume in lbs" to 1 and rerun the query.
What is the difference between wholesale Terminal Market and Shipping Point?
Shipping point refers to an area (district or location) where a commodity is produced (or port through which it is imported) and from which the commodity is first shipped, whereas terminal or wholesale market refers to a physical location from which a commodity is distributed for local sales. Please see the Portal Help section on this topic, available here.