Satellite Imagery May Soon Help Farmers Manage Crops

While unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have ag-tech circles buzzing, promising a bumper crop of real-time imagery, satellites may steal some of their thunder if they can deliver actionable images every week across America’s heartland, reported Farm Industry News.

Late last year, Land O’Lakes quietly bought GEOSYS, a French-based satellite imagery company, and began delivering weekly satellite crop images to U.S. farmers through WinField-affiliated ag retailers in April. Satshot, another major satellite imagery provider, has been providing five-meter resolution crop images since 2013. In 2014, it increased the frequency to every three weeks, and it plans to begin providing weekly images in 2015.

Meanwhile, if regulations don’t hinder them, UAVs could begin delivering real-time anytime crop images for the 2016 crop season. Those, combined with crop imagery from manned aircraft and ground-based sensor systems, will serve up a wealth of imagery source to help U.S. producers manage their crops.

Until this year, satellite imagery companies could deliver usable crop images every three or four weeks—not frequent enough, and without enough temporal resolution, for farmers to build an in-season scouting and crop management program around them.

Weekly image frequency will be a game-changer. Imagery from satellites and UAVs can provide raw data that will help farmers react to crop stress in a timely manner to protect yield or reduce inputs. During the growing season, uses might include early monitoring of crop stands, weed pressure and nitrogen losses.

In the meantime, service providers must wait to see if in-season crop imagery will pay for itself, which will be critical to its success.