Satellite technologies produce substantial amounts of valuable statistics for agriculture. However satellite imagery does not deliver any analytics of its own, let alone recommendations or decisions. The statistics initially comes from satellite operators and is openly obtainable and open for profitable usage. However every publicly obtainable statistics necessitates processing and examination. Machine “decipherers” from the linguistic of settlement imageries into a format comprehensible for any farmer already occur. At the user’s request, the system connects to satellite databases, extracts data, and envisages it in mutual custom formats in seconds.
Satellite monitoring technology does not educate farmers, but helps them understand which part of their fields needs more attention at the moment. Now, many development companies are creating crop monitoring systems for automatically determining the stages of crop growth, a notification system with “hints” for farmers, and also creating databases on the type of vegetation. In this article we will review a one-stop software solution for farm management by EOS Data Analytics.
About EOSDA
EOS Data Analytics (EOSDA) is a company that utilizes proprietary AI algorithms for advanced satellite imagery analytics. The company offers software solutions to foster smart decision-making within 22 industries, including agriculture and forestry. The company’s goal is ensuring environmental preservation and sustainability through offering technological possibilities for Earth cover monitoring and management in different spheres.
One of EOSDA’s main products is EOS Crop Observing, a digital tool that provides satellite crop monitoring service.
More so, the company aims to launch its own satellite constellation by 2025 within its EOS SAT project. The uniqueness of this constellation is that these 7 optical satellites will be agri-focused thanks to a specific set of 11 bands which will allow for even more accurate, precise, and effective crop monitoring and analysis. It will also aid in tackling such acute global issues as climate change, soil degradation, water resources depletion, and more.
What Crop Monitoring Has to Offer
Fundamentally, Crop Monitoring enables users to get the most useful information based on the analysis of satellite images. And this is not only the traditional NDVI vegetation index but also NDRE, MSAVI, ReCI, and moisture index NDMI.
Among a variety of features provided via the platform is weather data, including 14-day weather forecast, current weather, and historical weather data available since 2008. The purpose of such data is to give farmers an opportunity to significantly improve field activities planning (fertilization, irrigation, tillage, planting, harvesting, etc).
Thanks to advanced imagery analytics in close to real time, the software enables timely detection of crop health issues, including diseases or pests outbreak, heat/cold/water stress, weeds, and more. With this information, farmers can make decisions faster and more effectively, relying on precise data, which means saved time, reduces costs, and higher yields.
The tool also helps with VRA approach implementation thanks to generation of vegetation and productivity maps. These maps divide the field on zones depending on vegetation indices measurement in different field parts, allowing growers to perform differentiated application of seeds, water, fertilizers, and pesticides, minimizing waste of resources and money while increasing field productivity. Vegetation maps are used for current field state assessment, enabling smart nitrogen fertilizer application while productivity maps evaluate historical field data and help with phosphorus and potassium fertilizers application, since they are accumulated in soil.
Scouting feature available on the platform allows for improved field management thanks to precise problem area detection. Hence, the user can easily guide the scouts in the fields, saving time and effort on field inspection. Field owners can set the tasks online, and the platform will automatically notify the scout. Thanks to the mobile scouting app, scouts can work in the fields even without Internet connection, adding comments and snapshots to their scouting reports.
More so, using the platform’s Team Account feature field owners, consultants, scouts, insurers, input suppliers, and other parties can access the necessary data on fields and crops from the same account depending on the level of accessibility provided to them by the account owner.
The company also provides easy access to EOS Crop Monitoring opportunities via White label solution or with a RESTful API. Hence, customers won’t need a large development team for development, integration, and maintenance of a new software or an enhancement of an existing one.
