I built Land Atlas, a web application for analyzing the agricultural potential of land listings. The main goal is to answer: What is the quality of the soil? How farmable is the property? Which crops are best suited to its soil and growing conditions? Most property listings contain price, acreage, photographs, and a short description, but provide little structured information about agricultural viability. Land Atlas combines listing and geospatial data with: Soil type and texture Soil productivity indicators pH and organic matter Drainage and water capacity Slope and terrain Flooding and ponding Climate and growing conditions Crop requirements The application attempts to convert those inputs into: Soil-quality assessments Farmability scores Property limitations Crop-suitability rankings One difficult part has been accurately resolving rural listings. Postal cities, listing labels, coordinates, and physical parcel locations frequently disagree. I recently changed the location hierarchy to prioritize parcel identifiers and listing-provided coordinates over ordinary address geocoding. I would appreciate feedback on: Soil-scoring methodology Crop-suitability modeling Parcel-level versus point-level analysis Communicating uncertainty Global agricultural datasets Normalizing data between jurisdictions Demo: https://land-atlas-production.up.railway.app/

We're in need of more local, non-pesticide based farming

Former GIS guy here, I've modeled and mapped hundreds of rural jurisdictions so I'm familiar with what you are trying to accomplish. Not sure how comprehensive USDA soil surveys are these days as soil conditions can be hyper local (down to the feet).

Many of large ranch lands and farms are going to be listed exclusively by a certain broker which may require website scrapping at minimum and or heads up data entry at worst.

Colorado:

https://www.ranchland.com/

For general usability, I'd suggest at a minimum adding State and County lines, and further, census place points for labeling.

You've included some interesting filters that's for sure.

And of course my usual plug for a great mapping book - How to Lie with Maps - https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo274005...

I'd be willing to give you input.

It's nice to have a better UX the the USDA WSS offers, but I feel that this hides too much information. If I click, I am getting soil information at a point, but that might be a minor component and doesn't tell me about the overall area of interest. Also, as a Californian I feel that is irrelevant bordering on useless to display the non-irrigated capability class, as everyone irrigates. Looking at a parcel I am intimately familiar with, it is "4 of 8" but it is class 1 irrigated farmland, prime land of high value.

Weird question - is there any talks or attempts at limiting land owner usage of their soil for "<insert purpose here>" or is this mostly folklore or conspiracy talk?

I want to buy land some day and want to avoid the hotspots where my freedom of my property is curtailed in this way.

And maybe the soil use isn't specifically limited, but other proxies are in effect: I think of (a) water use, (b) spread of patented seed observed and business prosecution of your crop or even (c) control of your livestock or animals because "<insert plague or health concern here>".

Nice start to what can be a really useful tool. I did try some of the filters and I think there is a problem in your lookup database somewhere. I clicked on one of the listings in south Texas, Real County, and instead of the map showing the location of that property it took me to Uvalde, Texas which is quite a ways southeast of the property.

I saw similar things for a property in Joshua Tree, California that had no address, just a street name.

I would do as /u/ecommerceguy has suggested and at the very least add a toggle for State and County lines, and label roads and towns and other useful information.

As a feature that you could consider eventually adding for those who are interested in finding a rural property to land on, consider adding a toggle that can show the locations of the closest power and water access for a property using an labelled icon or other visual aid.

Sometimes the biggest challenge in determining whether you should purchase a property that you can live on is to find a place that is close enough to existing infrastructure that it doesn't cost more than the land value to gain access to water. Electricity is less important unless you are far enough north that your exposure limits your collection ability so that battery storage becomes a critical cost to consider.

With that in mind, adding info about solar suitability could be useful.

Here is a Google maps project that can help evaluate options for a property.[0]

[0]https://mapsplatform.google.com/maps-products/solar/

Water is the biggest challenge in most places. I see that you recommend pulling state wells logs for the properties. Perhaps a link to that resource would be useful. I have done water availability and quality work now for a couple of relatives in different states. There is a lot of variability in the data available and the quality of the data. Knowing which agency handles private and public well locations helps a lot. Knowing which agency monitors water quality locally also is important.

I know this is part of due diligence for an interested buyer. I think for your tool to maximize value to a buyer it should make it easy to find the bits of information that can steer the buyer to a conclusion.

Many blessings! Thank you for this! My friend just grabbed 5 acres near a phosphate processing plant and was very concerned about the soil. Still waiting on lab results, but the deal is sealed I think.

He intends to occupy and farm it. Organic if possible, else close enough. And I when he can afford, he'll be looking for more. I sent him your url.

Another thanks on his behalf, and his family too!