TL;DR. Stream B doesn’t score every producer in the United States — it scores producers who appear in operator-curated directories. The pilot evaluates five: A Greener World’s Certified Farms (national, certifier-curated), Abundant Montana (regional buying network), and three state agriculture department directories (Minnesota Grown, Kentucky Proud, Georgia Grown). Each directory has different curation rules, different listing depth, and a different mix of species and producer types — so the Stream B findings vary by directory in ways that are themselves worth surfacing.
Why directory selection matters
Stream B is structurally a published-disclosure rubric. The disclosures it scores are only as good as the directory that hosts them. A directory operator that requires a Tier-A certification on signup (A Greener World) gives Stream B a different baseline than a directory operator that accepts any in-state producer who fills out a form (a typical state agriculture department program). Both are legitimate — but the verification ceiling, the producer mix, and the typical category-by-category profile look different across them. Publishing the per-directory findings honestly lets a consumer or journalist see those differences instead of averaging them away.
Curation criteria — what makes a directory eligible for Stream B
A directory enters the Stream B evaluation set when it meets four criteria:
- Operator-curated. A state agency, regional nonprofit, or third-party certifier operates the directory and has some signup gate (residency, certification, or similar). General-purpose business directories and producer-Etsy-type listings are out of scope.
- Public root URL. The directory is publicly indexed and reachable without login.
- Producer-level identification. Listings name the farm, ranch, or fishery — not just a brand.
- Some structural depth. Listings carry at least a free-text “about” field; pure name-and-address rosters with no narrative content don’t surface enough to score.
The five directories below are the seeded set. Stream B will expand the set in subsequent waves as the methodology matures and the team confirms each new directory meets the criteria.
The five seeded directories
| Directory | Operator | Type | Geography | Listings (approx.) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Greener World — Certified Farms | A Greener World | Certifier (nonprofit) | National | ~600 | Evaluation in progress |
| Abundant Montana | Alternative Energy Resources Org. (AERO) | Regional nonprofit | Montana | ~280 | Evaluation in progress |
| Minnesota Grown | Minnesota Department of Agriculture | State agency | Minnesota | ~1,400 | Evaluation in progress |
| Kentucky Proud | Kentucky Department of Agriculture | State agency | Kentucky | ~5,000 (broad — meat subset ~400) | Evaluation in progress |
| Georgia Grown | Georgia Department of Agriculture | State agency | Georgia | ~1,800 | Evaluation in progress |
Each directory page carries the same structure: who runs it, what a typical listing looks like, Stream B’s sampling and scoring approach for that directory specifically, and — once the pilot scrape runs — the aggregate findings and the producer-by-producer table.
What each directory page will eventually carry
When the pilot scrape completes and the scoring work for a directory is done, that directory’s page graduates from placeholder to the full evaluation:
- The per-category aggregate (out of all sampled producers, what share scored Known / Partial / Missing on Species, Breed, … through Who Stands Behind the Product).
- The traceability-level distribution (how many sampled producers reached Level 2 vs. Level 3+).
- The headline finding for that directory — the one or two structural patterns that distinguish this directory’s producer profile from the others.
- A sortable producer table linking each scored producer back to their directory listing and producer-website source URLs, with a verification ceiling annotation on every Known score.
- A last reviewed date so consumers and journalists know how fresh the directory’s evaluation is.
Until each directory’s evaluation is complete, the page carries a placeholder with the directory’s metadata, the evaluation approach FAT will take, and an honest “Evaluation in progress” status.
Sources
- FAT Stream B Pilot Dataset (2026-05-06) — the workbook recording the directory metadata, the producer schema, and the eventual scoring results.
- FAT Two-Stream Methodology Framing (2026-05-06) — the source memo that defines the criteria a directory must meet to enter the Stream B evaluation set.
- A Greener World, Alternative Energy Resources Organization, and the agriculture departments of Minnesota, Kentucky, and Georgia — the operators of the five seeded directories.
See the Stream B methodology for the full rubric and the four verification-ceiling tiers.
Last reviewed: May 2026