Crop Monitoring Platform For Remote Farm Risk Management

We have been using EOSDA Crop Monitoring for a year. It is an essential part of workflow now. I found the Weather tool really helpful and accurate. We are using it daily. It would be very helpful for fruit growers if you add a chill hours calculator as this will help in agro-decision making.

We see the remote sensing platform as a critical tool for our Pineapple growing and harvesting. In the past, our attempts were the usual way of doing it: Landsat download and processing, slopes from NASA SRTM, Sentinel-2 Hub downloads, and using ENVI, QGIS for data processing. We can always go back to that approach. Why not? However, it only takes hours, not even days, to assess the crops via satellite data processing – say, after forcing, after urea, after herbicide, fungicide, etc. So, I think most, if not all people I’ve discussed this with, are “on board” with the concept of EOSDA Crop Monitoring – because I’ve shown them a use case that is real and is taken from field experience. It demonstrates the real state of things and that gets the approval of upper management. Also, we have UAV/Drone data for about 5-years on archive - that otherwise would take weeks to process, days to fly, etc. Being a Sunday Manager of the week I had to present the report, so instead of just talking, I used EOSDA Crop Monitoring to show the state of vegetation, rainfall, weather and NDVI, NDRE of the harvested fields as well as MSAVI, NMDI for those fields currently under plowing. It was a great success because now the report has graphics and is full of visualizations instead of just words and numbers.

We found that automated EOS Data Analytics reporting saves time and increases accuracy. This adds value to the business by having accurate records for harvest monitoring and forward scheduling of crews. We are also able to obtain information on cloudy days which occur a lot in the winter months.

Insurance companies nowadays find it progressively harder to generate risk profiles of their clients due to ever-changing patterns. It is essential for both insurers and farmers to be aware of the upcoming unfavorable weather conditions in advance. While it is extremely hard to predict abrupt weather changes triggered by climate change using traditional methods, satellite-based analytics and machine learning are up for the challenge.

I find EOSDA Crop Monitoring a great tool, we at Viridix use it to plan our Water potential sensors installation taking into account variability in agriculture fields.

What we find the most useful about the EOSDA Crop Monitoring platform is the NDVI maps that help us determine the areas with lower vegetative vigor so we can notify the producers and carry out the field visit (scouting). We find the technology more effective than trying to identify these areas with a naked eye. We also use productivity maps. In our opinion, EOSDA Crop Monitoring vegetation and productivity maps are very beneficial as they allow growers to see more varieties in crop health and productivity across each field, focusing on the areas with growth problems and getting a better general picture of the crop development.

Agriculture in South America is very dynamic and diversified, being a key economic activity of the continent’s countries. Among the most important grains, soybeans are the main crop, followed by corn, wheat, and rice. However, South American agriculture faces several challenges, including soil conditions (acidity and lack of some mineral nutrients), climate (high temperatures and periods of water scarcity), infrastructure limitations (poor access to roads and lack of broad Internet coverage in rural areas), and cultural limitations (low adoption of technology). Therefore, using technology and technical advisory - like EOSDA Crop Monitoring - is essential to partly mitigate these constraints, employing knowledge of soil chemistry, climatic data, and satellite crop monitoring to achieve better yields with technical and economic efficiency.

Using the EOSDA Crop Monitoring platform, we can more efficiently allocate the scouting resources and resolve the disputable issues faster when an insurance claim report arrives. In this regard, the company finds the platform quite helpful. Furthermore, DNHZ offers EOS Crop Monitoring as an added value product to its clients, so everyone can have access to the fields in one place.

Aseagro is the leading central pivot irrigation monitoring company in Argentina, providing services to national and international seed production companies that specialize in growing Corn, Sunflower, Sorghum and other crops for 20 years now. We use EOSDA Crop Monitoring as a complement to the irrigation monitoring services we perform through sensors, telemetry and Big Data. More specifically, we rely on NDVI, NDRE, MSAVI and RECI data to check the vegetative state of the crops in terms of whether they are developing as planned. We also use these data to get general information about the land plot. We also use the NDMI surface soil water indicator to determine soil moisture content within 5 cm from the ground. In addition, we compare EOSDA Crop Monitoring weather forecasts with the data we collect from the network of stations located in every key area to get a more precise reading of weather conditions. Comparing data from telemetric sensors with the data on EOSDA Crop Monitoring platform allows us to enhance the precision of our decision-making as to the weekly watering of crops thanks to a more precise Big data analysis of water balances.

The EOSDA Crop Monitoring platform works very well for us, we are currently using it to the max because April is the harvest month. I had some doubts regarding the assignment of the crop and planting date for individual fields, but, with your help, I have changed my mind. It is very useful for us to monitor the development of the crop so closely, but only when it is in a full vegetative state. When the plant is very small I cannot identify birth problems. I also found it very useful to identify weed patches prior to planting crops.