Fas

What Fas does

Fas exposes USDA Foreign Agricultural Service Production, Supply and Distribution (PSD) data through MCP. It is designed for questions about agricultural production, consumption, inventories, supply estimates, and trade totals for a commodity worldwide or in a selected country.

The server also provides a searchable catalog of PSD commodity codes, descriptions, categories, and common country codes. Search by a familiar name such as "corn" and use the resulting code with the production tool when a precise identifier is needed.

Fas is an independent Pipeworx integration. It connects agents to the USDA PSD API through the Pipeworx gateway rather than serving as an official USDA client.

How it works

A hosted MCP connection uses the Pipeworx endpoint at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/fas/mcp. The gateway forwards requests to the USDA PSD API and handles the shared platform authentication. The production lookup accepts a commodity name or PSD code, an optional country, and an optional market year. When the requested current year has not been published, it can search backward by up to two market years.

The same service can be reached through the full Pipeworx gateway, where the Fas tools are available alongside other data-source tools. Pack endpoints also expose shared Pipeworx meta-tools, including routing and discovery functions. The exact tool list is returned during MCP initialization.

For clients without MCP support, individual tools can be called through the Pipeworx HTTP API. A local npm package provides a stdio bridge that forwards calls to the hosted endpoint and therefore requires network access.

Setup and configuration

Add the hosted endpoint to an MCP client such as Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Windsurf:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fas": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/fas/mcp"
    }
  }
}

For a local process, run @pipeworx/mcp-fas with npx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fas": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-fas"]
    }
  }
}

Anonymous use is capped at 50 calls per day. Setting PIPEWORX_API_KEY adds a Pipeworx account key and raises the daily limit to 200 calls. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 if the local bridge should also list the gateway-wide meta-tools. The npm bridge does not provide offline operation.

Tools and capabilities

• fas_commodity_codes: Search bundled PSD commodity and country codes using an optional category or search term.
• fas_production: Retrieve production, consumption, stocks, supply estimates, and trade totals for a commodity worldwide or for one country. Optional market-year selection is supported.

The production tool accepts names such as corn as well as PSD identifiers such as 0440000.

Limitations and notes

The previous fas_exports and fas_imports tools were removed and should not be treated as available Fas tools. For US or global agricultural trade broken down by commodity and partner, use the keyless Pipeworx Comtrade tools instead: comtrade_trade_data, comtrade_top_partners, and comtrade_top_commodities.

USDA FAS OpenData uses the api.data.gov platform and requires an API key for direct access. The gateway supplies a shared data.gov key; callers can pass their own key as _apiKey. If no key is available, production requests return an API-key-required response with a signup link.

The MIT-licensed integration depends on the remote Pipeworx gateway and USDA API. When using the local bridge behind an HTTPS proxy, Node's fetch behavior may require NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 on supported Node versions.