Iowa Certified Organic Farms and Businesses

Certified organic farms and businesses physically located in Iowa that have passed inspection from a USDA National Organic Program Accredited Inspection Agency. Columns suggest detailed records for each operation, including Operation ID, name, certifier, certification status, and effective dates for crops, livestock, wild crops, and handling activities. The dataset also includes physical address fields and geographic references like Iowa ZIP Code Tabulation Areas and watersheds.

Use Cases

• Mapping organic operation density using Physical Address City and Iowa ZIP Code Tabulation Areas.
• Analyzing certification trends over time using Operation Certification Status Effective Date and CROPS Effective Date.
• Identifying certifying agencies and their client operations using Certifier Name and Operation Name.
• Assessing the scope of organic activities per farm using CROPS Certified Products, LIVESTOCK Certified Products, and HANDLING Certified Products.

Strengths

• Cross-platform presence on Socrata and Data.gov signals importance and broad availability.
• Contains specific certification details like effective dates and status for multiple product categories (CROPS, LIVESTOCK, WILD CROPS, HANDLING).
• Includes geospatial reference columns such as Iowa Watersheds (HUC 10) and US Counties for location-based analysis.

Limitations

• Key metadata like row count and dataset size are unknown across all sources.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between platforms (2026-05-01 on Socrata vs. 2026-04-04 on Data.gov).
• Author information is missing, and the license is only generically noted as 'other-license-specified'.

Provenance

Source

State of Iowa, based on inspections from USDA National Organic Program Accredited Inspection Agencies.

Collection Method

Administrative records from the certification and inspection process.

Freshness

Last updated date conflicts: Socrata lists 2026-05-01, Data.gov lists 2026-04-04.

Geography

Iowa, United States.