USDA Food Environment Atlas

USDA Food Environment Atlas data is the USDA Economic Research Service's county-level picture of how Americans reach food: 304 indicators for every U.S. county and county-equivalent — grocery, supercenter, convenience and dollar store counts, fast-food and full-service restaurant density, SNAP and WIC authorization, farmers markets, food insecurity, diabetes and poverty rates — organized in nine categories with indicator vintages running from 2012 to 2023. The unit of analysis is the county, keyed by 5-digit FIPS code: the same key Census tables use, so every indicator joins onto demographic and economic baselines without a geocoding project.

Nine categories organize the set, from the 95-indicator Local Foods block down to 5 state soda and snack tax rates.

Get a sample of this dataset to see real county rows with the complete field dictionary before you commit.

Two views of the same extract. The first is the long-format observation table — one row per county and indicator — shown here for Autauga County, Alabama, tracking its low-access population from the 2015 vintage to the 2019 one. The second is the variable-list codebook that maps every indicator code to its name, category and units.

COUNTY OBSERVATIONS — long format, one row per county and indicator
| FIPS  | STATE | COUNTY  | VARIABLE_CODE | VALUE       |
| ----- | ----- | ------- | ------------- | ----------- |
| 01001 | AL    | Autauga | LACCESS_POP15 | 18092.66135 |
| 01001 | AL    | Autauga | LACCESS_POP19 | 18503.22551 |

VARIABLE LIST — codebook joined to every row
| VARIABLE_CODE   | VARIABLE_NAME                                 | CATEGORY              | UNITS         |
| --------------- | --------------------------------------------- | --------------------- | ------------- |
| GROC20          | Grocery stores, 2020                          | Store Availability    | Count         |
| REDEMP_SNAPS23  | SNAP redemptions/SNAP-authorized stores, 2023 | Food Assistance       | Dollars/store |
| FOODINSEC_21_23 | Household food insecurity (%, 3-year average) | State Food Insecurity | Percent       |

Long format is the honest shape for 304 indicators that each carry their own vintage and units. Pivot on the code and every county becomes a column-complete record.

Five identity-and-value fields ride along with every observation row. FIPS doubles as the universal join key, and Value codes its own gaps deliberately: N/A or -9999 marks a figure that is unavailable or suppressed, -8888 marks a county that did not exist that year. Three codebook fields arrive joined alongside every row, and the worked indicator fields below show how far named measures go: SNAPS23 counting SNAP-authorized stores, or the LACCESS_POP pair grading distance-based access at more than 1 mile urban and 10 miles rural.

The dictionary covers the core row schema plus worked examples; the full 304-code vocabulary — store counts by NAICS class, restaurant splits, WIC authorization counts, farmers markets, diabetes and obesity rates, poverty measures — arrives mapped in exactly this shape, and any narrower slice you scope ships as additional fields on request.

Nine categories, unevenly weighted — and the weighting tells you where the depth lives:

1. Local Foods — 95 indicators, the largest single block: farmers markets, direct farm sales, agritourism and farm-to-school programs.
2. Access and Proximity to Foodstore — 65 indicators: population, low-income households, carless households, SNAP households, children, seniors and race/ethnicity groups living far from a foodstore, as counts, percents and percent changes.
3. Food Assistance — 54 indicators: SNAP redemptions, WIC, school meals and food banks.
4. Store Availability — 38 indicators: grocery stores (NAICS 445110), supercenters and club stores (452311), convenience stores (445120, 447110), specialized food stores (4452), dollar and general merchandise stores (452319), plus SNAP- and WIC-authorized store counts.
5. Socioeconomic Characteristics — 18 indicators, including poverty and deep-poverty rates.
6. Restaurant Availability — 12 indicators splitting fast-food and limited-service (722513) from full-service (722511) restaurants.
7. Health and Physical Activity: adult diabetes and obesity rates plus recreation facility counts.
8. State Food Insecurity — 6 indicators, three-year-average household measures published at state level.
9. Food Taxes — 5 indicators of state soda and snack tax rates.

Local Foods alone accounts for nearly a third of the entire set — 95 of 304 — which makes this the deepest county-level cataloging of direct-to-consumer farm sales anywhere.

• Geography: all U.S. counties and county-equivalents across the 50 states plus Washington, DC; selected measures publish at state level only and are flagged as such in the codebook.
• Temporal: indicator vintages run 2012–2023 inside one coherent edition — store counts for 2016 and 2020, SNAP-authorized stores 2017 and 2023, WIC stores 2016 and 2022, low-access measures 2015 and 2019, farmers markets 2013 and 2018, food insecurity as 2018–20 and 2021–23 three-year averages, poverty rates 2021.
• Granularity: county (5-digit FIPS), roughly 3,100 rows per indicator, one row per county-variable pair in the long-format layout.

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Every delivery carries the complete field dictionary above, the sample rows, and the coverage profile — mapped and ready, with no integration archaeology on your side.

1. Market researchers benchmarking any county's food environment across all nine categories at once — store mix, assistance uptake, health and income in one keyed table.
2. Retail and e-commerce operators scoring expansion counties on food insecurity, SNAP redemptions and restaurant availability against their own demand data.
3. Data scientists joining 304 indicators onto an internal county master, keyed on FIPS, with every code documented back to name, category and units.
4. Developers and builders wiring a normalized county-FIPS feed into pipelines that already speak Census geography.
5. Journalists and academics citing USDA Economic Research Service county figures for reporting and teaching, with a codebook behind every number.

Notes and adjacent reading:

• USDA Food Access Research Atlas — the tract-level sibling: the same access question one census geography finer.
• SHED Public Use Data Files (2013-2025) — household-level financial well-being to pair with the Atlas's place-level structure.
• World Bank Global Findex Database 2025 — global account ownership when the comparison needs to leave the United States.

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