“Signals” are normalized USDA market, demand, and supply tone phrases grouped into simple buckets. Mixed USDA phrases may count toward more than one bucket when the source text describes multiple conditions. Blank or null tone values are omitted because they represent absence-of-signal, not a USDA tone.
The signal uses all available rows in the rolling USDA window, up to 45 days, and compares the later half of available rows against the earlier half to identify which normalized tone bucket gained the most share. Signal labels describe the strength of that recent tone shift; they are not price forecasts.
The Physical Price Proxy is the median normalized USDA price per 100 lbs for rows flagged as part of the global physical proxy and assigned to the core russet carton basket. Current price uses the latest available quote date. The price signal compares that current median against the first half of available proxy rows. Daily Price shows the latest seven available USDA quote dates. Weekly Price groups available proxy rows by week and shows the median price for each week. It is intended as a physical-market benchmark, not a universal potato price.
Source: /api/usda.json