Correct tags for a Livestock Market

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1

Are there established tags for a market or auction hall that sells only living farm animals?

I was resolving some old onosm.org-notes in Ireland, and came across this one about a livestock market. I’m not sure what the correct tags are in this case. There is nothing in the wiki, and the only related topic I could find is in the polish subcategory and suggests shop=trade + trade=livestock. This seems to be pretty much what I am looking for, but has exactly one use so far, accoring to Taginfo. Therefore I wonder if there is another tagging that I missed, or are livestock markets like this really nonexistent in OSM so far?

2

I’ve looked at it previously, & no, there doesn’t seem to be?

There was a discarded proposal for Proposal:Auctioneer - OpenStreetMap Wiki that seems to be office=auctioneer | Tags | OpenStreetMap Taginfo, which would then seem to continue as auctioneer | Keys | OpenStreetMap Taginfo, but that seems to be more for their office / auction rooms? @SomeoneElse may be able to comment, as he’s used it in his mapping scheme.

For saleyards, combining this with industrial may be a better option? e.g.
landuse=industrial + industrial=livestock + livestock=auction / salesyard

There is also Tag:farmyard=stockyard - OpenStreetMap Wiki but I wouldn’t have called a saleyard a “farmyard”.

3

They’re all waiting for a decent tag, I think. Three that immediately come to mind are Shrewsbury, Bakewell, and Murton, and none of them have a “proper” tag.

4

I haven’t seen a satisfactory tagging for auction marts (and auction houses) e.g.
Hexham Mart is tagged with shop=auction, but with only note to indicate livestock. Both shop=auction and shop=auction_house have tiny usage.

5

It appears that this one is truly and utterly missing, so an ATYL is called for. Even Wikipedia does not have an article for livestock market (that’s a redlink).

I would suggest amenity=livestock_market, modeled after amenity=marketplace.

I’m not into the matter much, but those places exist even in most rural areas of the world. Those tend to be open only sporadically, sometimes on a specific day of the week, sometimes only once a month. And some of them share place with another open space – this one near me is held on the car market (but then, nobody sells cars on market anymore). But none of the above prevents having a feature tagged as an amenity=livestock_market, either standalone, double-tagged with something else (landuse=commercial, building=*) or just placed as a point somewhere.

6

Sounds good, but to me “amenity” suggests small scale?

As some saleyards are big e.g. Way: ‪Roma Saleyards‬ (‪832548715‬) | OpenStreetMap, I wonder if industrial could be a better option?

landuse=industrial would also have the benefit of rendering (which I know isn’t supposed to be a priority in anything, but it is nice to actually see your work appear!)

7

‘amenity’ has no implications on size, and there are already some very large amenities (just think amenity=prison, parking, hospital, university, marketplace, …)
These are features, landuse doesn’t seem appropriate as a feature tag, but if I were coerced into adding a landuse tag, I’d prefer commercial to industrial for a market.

8

I was looking at marts recently, after I noticed that one has a spelling error in its name. But, hey, that’s how they spell it, so fair enough.

For Ireland, I get the impression that most marts are farmer co-operatives and the bidding is managed by local auctioneers, likely working on a commission basis. The buyers are meat factories, animal traders, exporters and other farmers. In Ireland. I suspect the only sellers are farmers and animal traders.

Goffs: Way: ‪Goffs‬ (‪1266234210‬) | OpenStreetMap seems to carry out similar functions for horses.

Other than various categories of cattle, some marts seem to also host sales / auctions of other animals, agricultural machinery, and other vehicles

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So, I used TagInto to find likely cattle marts, using the following search words. As I found likely words that would be useful in finding other marts, I expanded the list.

The searches were in this format: Search results | OpenStreetMap Taginfo Ireland and Northern Ireland which will search all values, regardless of key. However, such a search can have issues with punctuation or incomplete words in the value.

Search words:
*~Mart
*~Livestock
*~Cattle
*~Co-op - poor quality, most ignored as it isn’t clear if they are related to cattle marts.
*~Farmers
*~Agricultural
*~Marts
*~Mairt - “Ha. No. No ha-hah.”

I ignored:
name~Farmers Market
animal=“cattle;horse”
livestock=cattle
addr:housename=“Tipperary Cattle Mart Limited”
description=“cattle mart for buying and selling cows”

I also had to exclude entries that were the names of streets and places that were named after (past or present) marts and non-livestock related shops and (m)artist premises.

================================

On sorting the list alphabetically and discarding the non-tag data, everything was either name~Mart or had name~Mart attached to it. On looking at a few, the names of the marts and their operators do not appear to be anyway consistent (what’s new?).

name=Athenry Mart

name=Balla Mart
name=Ballyjamesduff Mart
name=Ballymena Livestock Market
name=Ballymote Mart
name=Baltinglass Mart
name=Bandon Mart
name=Blessington Mart

name=Cahersiveen Livestock Mart
name=Carnaross Mart
name=Cashel Mart
name=Castleblaney Livestock Sales
name=Castleisland Co-op Livestock Mart
name=Castlerea Mart
name=Cavan Co Operative Mart
name=Clogher Mart
name=Cootehill Livestock Mart
name=Cork Marts
name=Cork Marts, Corrin Event Centre

name=Delvin Mart
name=Dingle Mart
name=Dowra Mart
name=Drumshanbo Mart

name=East Down Farmers Ltd
name=Edgeworthstown Cattle Mart
name=Ennis Marts
name=Enniskillen Farmers Mart

name=Farmers Mart
name=Fermoy Mart
name=Former Gortlee Livestock Mart

name=Golden Vale Mart
name=Granard Farmers’ Mart

name=Kanturk Agricultural Mart
name=Kilkenny Mart
name=Kilkenny Mart Property Office
name=Kilkenny Mart Store
name=Kilrea Livestock Market
name=Kingscourt Marts LTD

name=Lanesboro Co-Op Hall
name=Leinster Co-op Marts
name=Leinster Marts Ltd
name=Leinster Marts
name=Lisnaskea Mart
name=Livestock building
name=Livestock Mart
name=Livestock Market
name=Longford-Westmeath Farmers’ Mart
name=Loughrea Mart

name=Maam Cross Mart
name=Mid Kerry Co-Op Mart
name=Mitchelstown Mart
name=Mohill Livestock Mart
name=Mountbellew Mart & Regional Co-Op

name=Portlaoise Mart
name=Portumna Co-Op Mart

name=Roscommon Livestock Mart

name=Skibbereen Mart

name=Tipperary Cattle Mart Ltd.
name=Tullamore Mart
name=Tullow Livestock Mart

name=Waterford Ross Co-op Marts

================================

The trick now is to search for the above using Overpass-Turbo and seeing what tags people are actually using.

Issue: I suspect that is only half the marts in Ireland. Are the others unmapped or named / tagged something else?

9

For Australia, they would probably all be “Saleyards”, but tagged a variety of ways!

Quick check comes back with
45 x farmyard
3 x retail area
2 x commercial area
2 x animal keeping
1 x animal enclosure
1 x factory
1 x industrial

New Zealand adds another 4 x farmyards & 1 x industrial

So, under current standards, at least here, farmyard appears to be the way to go!

Tag:landuse=farmyard - OpenStreetMap Wiki does include “These areas are often fenced in, and may include fenced livestock feed lots” so that’s not a huge jump to “the place where livestock are sold”.

10

First of all, there’s the problem of what’s a “Market” or “Mart”. Some markets may have multiple auction houses. The post seems only 1 auctioneer? They need to be distinguished, at least with an attribute.
There’s no need for an amenity=*_market for every “market”. This is not scalable.
With office=auctioneer , only offices vs auction venues needs to be clarified by eg amenity=auction (may not be suitable for shop= )
29 amenity=auction_house | Tags | OpenStreetMap Taginfo
Another question is whether only livestocks for raising needs to be considered. “Wholesale market” for meat is more familiar to me, although they may not have auctions.

11

It’s a long stretch to call it “standards”. Like the original poster here, mappers encounter those in the wild, search the documentation for best tag (to no avail), and then try and select the closest thing available. A livestock market is a yard, it has to do with farming, so it becomes a landuse=farmyard. Alternatively, it has to do with selling, so it becomes a landuse=commercial.

If I were in such situation, I would likely pick something like amenity=marketplace + landuse=commercial + livestock=cow; sheep; chicken. But I really think we need a dedicated tag, since it’s a well-defined concept (although the details vary across the world – in my region I only know for small, seller-to-buyer markets; auctions are unheard of). A formal proposal would be fine, but if we forge a consensus in this discussion, I don’t see why we shouldn’t document it in Wiki, retag known markets appropriately, and propose a preset for iD and JOSM.

12

I don’t think we should classify those under *auction* label. Auctioning is only a method for selling here, and the primary purpose of the place is to buy or sell livestock. Like I said, auctioning is not used in my area (as far as I know), and probably other parts of the world have their own customs how the place is organized. And, for the form I’m familiar with, a marketplace is much closer match – some farmers bring their cattle there on the market day, others come there to buy it directly from sellers. And it is usually located adjacent to the marketplace proper.

Sure, we’d need some tags to describe that the livestock is sold by auctioning (or not), how many auctioneers are there, etc. But I feel those are secondary to the fact that you go there to buy or sell livestock.

13

Being a bit nit-picky here, but is it an “auction_house” when it’s outdoors?

I meant "it seems the standard i.e. most common, tagging in Australia. & I agree that yes, they probably all searched & couldn’t find a “proper” answer.

14

Searched for “livestock market” on Commons, and here’s a couple of finds, just to illustrate variety (and hopefully reuse them for a future Wiki page):slight_smile:

^Apparently an auction taking place indoors. Is that a dedicated building? (building=livestock?)

^ Also an auction, but this time outdoors. The yard looks purpose-built, with permanent enclosures.

^ One in Ecuador. Apparently a dedicated space (fence + poles + “area de porcinos” inscription). Apparently a simple seller-to-buyer market.

^ One in Eritrea. No visible facilities, so it may just be a space where the market is customarily open on market days. Still worth a point on the map, I’d say.

15

What about auction=no / yes / only or something similar. The same concept as second_hand=no / yes / only we already use for (clothes-) shops.

I have another question regarding the wording.
Are Mart, Market and Marketplace different things (in some regions or variants of english) or are they interchangable pretty much everywere? The english Wikipedia doesn’t seem to differentiate at all. The box in the External Links section of the marketplace-article lists all the different types of market. Mart, Market, Marketplace and a few others link back to the very same “Marketplace” article.

16

Marketplace has a ‘fixed outdoor geographical location’ connotation that market does not necessarily have.

Market leans towards an indoor place.

In Ireland, mart has a specific livestock connotation, but there are specific named shops or groups of shops that have mart in their name, e.g. Marino Mart in Dublin.

File:Dublin - 21-31 Marino Mart - 2025-09-25 08-31-09 001.jpeg - Wikimedia Commons

17

I guess for cattle markets it is common to be outdoors but the term marketplace is not limited to open air places, it could be covered as well, depends on the culture (tradition), climate, wealth, context etc.
In OpenStreetMap, a 22% of all amenity=marketplace have also a building tag, which is the method that the wiki suggests to distinguish between halls and open air spaces.

18

Yes, I agree that it is essential to have at least a secondary tag indicating the sales are by auction. There’s a fundamental difference between direct buyer/seller sales (where the current “stall” icon for amenity=marketplace is appropriate) and sales-by-auction. If, say, amenity=marketplace + auction=yes becomes established, then you could imagine a bespoke rendering.

I think a simple yes / no should be sufficient and clearer. I don’t see how a market could operate both models?

19

Better be save than sorry. It may not common in your part of the world, and it may not be feasable at a large scale, but why shouldn’t there be an “auction-mode” and a “price-tag-mode” at the same time?
auction=yes as in: there are also auctions.
auction=only as in: there are exclusively auctions.

amenity=mart would be a possible solution then? Or something like amenity=marketplace + marketplace=mart?

Edit:

There are a bit over 300 marketplace=* values, and 21 marketplace=livestock in particular. That looks like a reasonable way to tag these Marts as well.

amenity=marketplace
marketplace=lifestock
auction=only
operator=
name=
contact:*=
payment=
and other tags if applicable

20

Good find. I was looking only at the wiki, where key:marketplace is not even documented [yet]. No wonder, since it has only 336 uses, half of which are marketplace=plot, whose purpose I can’t fathom (Does it mean that it’s just an empty plot most of the time? Gotta look at overpass.)

I would still slightly prefer amenity=livestock_market over amenity=marketplace; marketplace=livestock, but hey, the latter is reasonable enough and will readily render. (I don’t ever tag for the renderer except… sometimes. :wink:)