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Data sources and credits
Where every figure on the site comes from, under which terms, how to credit it, and what the “as of” date beside a number means.
Every figure on The Ag Digest says where it came from and when it was measured. This page gathers those sources in one place, with the terms each is published under and the credit line to use when you repeat a number.
Two kinds of content
Articles in the digest are other newsrooms' reporting. The Ag Digest gathers, summarizes and translates them; it did not write them. Each article names its outlet and links to the original. When you quote one, credit the outlet, not us.
Figures on the market, weather, trade and desk pages come from the public sources below. Where the page shows a number we worked out from a source (a median, a per-kilogram price, a change), it is labelled as The Ag Digest's calculation, and the credit line names both.
Magazine features are our own work and may be credited to The Ag Digest.
The sources
| Source | What we show from it | Terms | Credit line |
|---|---|---|---|
| aT public wholesale market auctions (data.go.kr) | Every lot auctioned at five public wholesale markets, summarized per item, market and day: the auction pages, the lot explorer, the CSV files and the API | Published with no use restriction (공공데이터 이용허락범위 제한 없음); commercial use allowed | Source: aT public wholesale market auctions via data.go.kr; Ag Digest calculation. Origin as declared by the shipper. |
| aT public wholesale market settlement (data.go.kr) | Prices by grade and size and the long settlement history, from the markets' own settlement records | Published with no use restriction | Source: aT public wholesale market settlement via data.go.kr; Ag Digest calculation. |
| KAMIS (aT) | Daily retail prices for Korean staples on the Market page and the commodity price pages, with the five-year seasonal normal | Shown with attribution to KAMIS | Source: KAMIS (aT). |
| e-KAPEPIA | Livestock and egg prices and the day's biggest movers | Shown with attribution | Source: e-KAPEPIA. |
| Korea Customs Service (관세청, data.go.kr) | Monthly trade by ten-digit tariff line and partner country, imports valued CIF and exports FOB, on the Coffee and Beer & Spirits desks | No restriction on use; attribution to Korea Customs Service is kept | Source: Korea Customs Service. |
| UN Comtrade | Korea's annual trade at the six-digit HS level, with the world as partner | Reuse terms under review, so these values appear on the paid desks only | Source: UN Comtrade. |
| World Bank Pink Sheet | Monthly commodity references: arabica and robusta coffee, grains and other inputs | CC BY 4.0 | World Bank Pink Sheet, CC BY 4.0. |
| International Coffee Organization | The daily composite indicator price and the group indicator prices | Shown with the ICO's own attribution text | As the ICO's attribution text states on the page. |
| U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission | Weekly Commitments of Traders positioning for coffee futures | US government public data | Source: CFTC Commitments of Traders. |
| USDA | The US supply backdrop for the grains Korea imports (Foreign Agricultural Service production, supply and distribution) and crop statistics (National Agricultural Statistics Service) | US government public data | Source: USDA FAS PSD / USDA NASS. |
| USDA AMS Market News | US hay and feeder-cattle market reports. None appear on a page yet; when they do, they carry this credit line | US government public data | Source: USDA AMS Market News. |
| Korea Meteorological Administration (기상청) | Warnings, observations, soil conditions, agricultural daily statistics and solar-term crop risk on the weather desk | 공공누리 제1유형 (KOGL Type 1): reuse permitted with attribution | Source: Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). |
| European Central Bank reference rates | The won-to-dollar rate behind the US dollar view of auction prices and the coffee desk's currency signals | Public reference rates | Source: ECB reference rates. |
Where a source's terms are still under review, the page says so and the values stay with subscribers until the review is settled. A value we may not display is withheld with a note, never shown blank as if it did not exist.
What “as of” means
Every number carries the date it stands for: the trading day of an auction, the survey day of a retail price, the month of a customs return, the hour of a weather observation. That date is the one to repeat with the figure. It is not the day you read the page, and it is not the day we fetched the data.
Two more labels can appear beside a figure:
- Update due and Latest available mean the source would normally have published something newer by now. The value shown is still the most recent one the source has published.
- Provisional marks a first release the source may still revise, for example the newest days of auction settlement, which the markets keep correcting for about a week, or a customs month inside its correction window. Revised marks a value the source has since changed.
"About this data" on a chart opens the full record: the source and its link, the licence, the period, the as-of date, when it was retrieved, and the method and its version.
Crediting The Ag Digest's calculations
When you repeat a figure we worked out, name the source and us, and carry the date:
Seoul Garak apple, median ₩4,010 per kg, auction of 30 September 2026. Source: aT public wholesale market auctions via data.go.kr; Ag Digest calculation. Origin as declared by the shipper.
The CSV files and the API answers carry the same credit line and the as-of date with every download, so a spreadsheet or a script keeps them without extra work. See CSV exports and the API reference.
Methods
The way each figure is worked out is published beside it: the auction pages' method is on the auction index, the chart indicators and the trade methods open from "About this data" on their charts. Those notes describe what is computed and from what. They do not describe our internal tooling, and this documentation does not either.