Crop Monitoring Review – Over the years, farming and agricultural processes have become more complex and large-scale. This has led to the introduction and use of advanced analytic tools which help farmers automate farm processes and become more productive. Nowadays, many industries heavily use big data to know their customers better and improve services, giving them more profits. This is no different in the agriculture industry. The use of advanced analytics tools such as crop monitoring platforms helps farmers in their everyday practice. It reduces the amount of manual work done by farmers and provides them with regular updates on the health and growth of their crops. This way, farmers are able to generate better yields with less manual work.
What is EOS Crop Monitoring?
EOS Crop Monitoring, designed by EOS Data Analytics (EOSDA), is an online platform for precision agriculture used to monitor fields remotely in near-real-time. EOSDA is among the top companies that provide AI-powered satellite imagery analytics with proprietary algorithms. With this tool, farmers can get different types of agriculture data: weather threats (heat stress or cold stress), crop health, crop rotation, soil moisture, and others in one central hub.
Specification of the product
The crops are monitored constantly, which provides early detection of diseases, pests, weeds, and other factors that can cause a decrease in yield. Using this tool, farmers can make reliable and timely decisions regarding field activities, reducing costs, increasing yields, and saving time.
Satellite imagery analysis allows for fast and effective detection of field problem areas. When farmers see the field zone that requires inspection, they can assign a scout to the exact point on the field via the platform. Scouts see the task in a special scouting mobile app and go to the marked location to check what the issue is and describe it in their scouting report instantly. More so, they don’t even need the Internet to do so.
The scouting process is enhanced with the use of satellites since it can detect problem areas remotely and guide scouts directly to the needed area, saving time and effort on searching this area from the ground.
Crop Monitoring also offers access to weather data: 14-day forecasts and historical weather for 5 years timespan. This helps farmers to detect local weather patterns and plan their farm activities accordingly.
The platform also generates productivity and vegetation maps using data obtained from satellites. Farmers can use these maps to manage their farms by minimizing the use of resources and maximizing crop yield. With such maps, they can apply the VRA approach to seeding, fertilization, irrigation, etc, and plan effective crop rotation.
Farmers can monitor the growth and health of their crops using a range of vegetation indices like NDVI, NDRE, RECI, MSAVI, and NDMI. All of these indices help farmers to make better decisions. For instance, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) helps farmers to know the health of crops remotely. The sensors on the satellite can measure wavelengths of lights reflected and absorbed by green plants. So, with the NDVI measurements, growers can understand the amount of live green plants on their field.
Healthy crops with lots of chlorophyll reflect NIR and absorb red light, while diseased and dying crops do the opposite.
However, one index is not enough to evaluate crops’ state throughout the whole cultivation span. For example, NDVI is great to use when the crop is at a stage of active vegetation growth, hence having lots of green biomass. But if applied at early growth stages, the result of NDVI measurement can be incorrect due to the bare soil presence on the picture.
Also, if farmers need to share any field data with other parties (consultants, insurance companies, traders, other agro-cooperative members) they can do that via using the Team Account feature, setting the right available for each user.
Even though Crop Monitoring involves complex and advanced technology, you do not need to be an expert to use them. It helps farmers easily manage their farms and increase crop yields with less effort.