Crop Scouting: A Helping Hand From Above

It is time to survey the fields again but it takes time and resources. Besides, it’s never possible to get precise enough data about your crops, right? Well, how about a helping hand from above: remote sensing. Remote sensing is probably the closest thing to divine intervention in this day and age. Why not let the satellites watch over your crops regularly, so that you can get all of the necessary insights in real-time and react accordingly?

Celestial Science

Satellites never get tired of scanning your fields and they do it much better than any human eye is able to. For example, they are capable of using infrared vision, which is beyond the human visible range, and it just so happens that growing crops reveal many of their secrets when you are looking at them in the near-infrared. Like guardian angels, the satellites will keep that near infrared eye on the health of your crops.

EOSDA Crop Monitoring

There is hardly a limit to the amount of data a satellite can gather about your crops, but it means nothing without a fast and easy access to all of that data back on Earth. With that in mind, we have worked painstakingly hard on our EOSDA Crop Monitoring farming app, so that you can access all of that data about your crops in real-time and in a digestible format.

We have given Scouting a special place in EOSDA Crop Monitoring, a tab with a geolocation mark symbol. You will find it in the very middle of the vertical list of tabs, which is on the right side of your screen.

Multitasking

Crop Scouting is by no means designed to replace human specialists on the field. Rather, it is to save time and avoid cumbersome paperwork. Think about it, if a satellite detects one or more problem areas in your field, you then log into your scouting app, get a view of the problem areas online, tag them on the map, and send scouts to investigate. The scouts do their in-the-field observations, snap pictures, upload them into the app right away, and fill in the report in the appropriate section. This saves vast amounts of time. You can add as many tasks as you consider necessary, all at once. You can create tasks, edit, close, and / or remove them.

Orientation

As soon as you have logged into your account, while still in the “Fields” tab, click +ADD NEW TASK at the bottom of the right sidebar menu.

Your field is laid before you on the map. Here you can select any problem area detected by the satellite and attach a scouting task to it. In order to tag the problem area, single-click it on the map; an edit window will pop up at the center of your screen.

Since you can add as many tasks as you like, it may be a good idea to give each of them a unique name, for convenience.

Type in a description for better clarity and identification. Make sure you click “Save” when you are done.

Saved tasks show up at the bottom of the sidebar menu, in the Scouting Tasks section.

The status of the task can be either “New” when it’s active, or “Closed.”

Despite the fact that there is no word limit set for a task description, we generally recommend keeping it within a sentence or two. It will look neat and you will be able to tell at a glance what the task is all about, without actually opening it and scrolling down to read. Another option is to leave the information most important to you in the first sentence, so it could work as a heading, while the rest of the text stays hidden.

You may edit or remove the task at any time by clicking the vertical ellipsis (row of dots) in the top right corner of the Scouting Tasks pane.

In General

The “General” page of the Scouting tab is always the first to show up, this is where you set the task and edit its name and description. As a bonus, a scout can take and upload up to 20 images here, to illustrate any issues with the crops. This way the problem is tackled from various angles, to maximize the efficiency of scouting.

To see a close up of an uploaded image, just click it once. You can zoom in or out either by rolling the mouse wheel or clicking zoom icons in the top right corner. To select between multiple uploaded images, click the left or right arrows. Close the image by using the “X” button.

Scouting Actually

Let’s now move on to the “Report” pane of the Scouting tab, it serves as a ready-form to fill in any necessary details. This form includes the date of the scouting task, field Info, phase of development, and review.

The Field Info section deals with the most essential data about the field such as location, coordinates, area, crops, and dates.

Additionally, a scout can input numbers of various phases of development and for convenience, you can add as many phases as you like. The final touch is the Review section, where a scout defines the state of the crops by choosing any of the three following grades:

• Bad
• Normal
• Good

Once the data is filled in, the form can be automatically turned into a scouting report which contains all of the necessary data, including the soil moisture content, yields parameters, and expert comment.

Mobile App

No more paperwork, lost pens, and indistinguishable handwriting like the local doctor! All you need is a handheld device with access to the internet and a camera. Yes, we have put EOSDA Crop Monitoring on mobile to make the lives of scouts so much easier. With this farming app> installed on your smartphone, you can navigate to the problem areas on the field, take pictures on the go, type in the report, and share it with the owner in real-time.

In fact, the current mobile version of EOSDA Crop Monitoring specifically focuses on scouting. “Tasks” appear right on top of the list.

Mobile To Web

Let’s imagine that the scout in the field has just created a report. The owner, who is miles away from any location and with an internet connection, sees the report in the web version. Now the owner can export the report as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file. All he or she has to do is click the “export” icon in the top right, that looks like a classic download arrow.

Make sure the mobile app stays in sync with the desktop version, tap that round arrow icon in the top right corner regularly.

Final Touches

Scouting tasks can be updated or closed, depending on their status, but only in the desktop version of EOSDA Crop Monitoring.

We have also put a traditional defence mechanism in the task closing process, just in case. In other words, a warning window pops up any time you decide to close the task, to make sure you really mean to.

Note: You cannot close or remove tasks in the mobile app.

Scouting Via EOSDA Crop Monitoring

Make the best use of the latest advancements in space technology by employing satellites as the watchers and keepers of your crops. As they will transmit the insightful data back to Earth, make sure you are at the receiving end with our scouting application. Whether you are in the field or anywhere where there is internet connection, stay in touch with the true state of your crops in real-time with EOSDA Crop Monitoring.