Satellite & Remote Sensing
Remote Sensing: Overview
The short version of what Remote Sensing does and why it exists.
Public satellite programmes provide regular, free, ten-metre imagery over the whole UK, which is sufficient for most in-season monitoring decisions. This module ingests and processes that imagery into usable indices, handles cloud gaps with radar, and turns the resulting maps into zoning, scouting priorities and scheme evidence rather than pretty pictures.
Detail
Why Remote Sensing exists
Public satellite programmes provide regular, free, ten-metre imagery over the whole UK, which is sufficient for most in-season monitoring decisions. This module ingests and processes that imagery into usable indices, handles cloud gaps with radar, and turns the resulting maps into zoning, scouting priorities and scheme evidence rather than pretty pictures.
Sentinel-2 provides approximately weekly optical revisit at ten-metre resolution, and Sentinel-1 radar penetrates cloud, which matters greatly in a UK climate where optical gaps are routine. Remote sensing is also increasingly used by paying agencies for monitoring, which makes it as much a compliance reality as an agronomic tool.
Everything Remote Sensing records is written into the same platform data spine as every other module, which is why a single entry can satisfy an operational need, a scheme evidence requirement, an assurance clause and a carbon activity line at once. That is the whole design premise: the work is already being done, and it is the recording of it that is duplicated.
The ground reality
What is actually happening in remote sensing in the UK
Sentinel-2 provides approximately weekly optical revisit at ten-metre resolution, and Sentinel-1 radar penetrates cloud, which matters greatly in a UK climate where optical gaps are routine. Remote sensing is also increasingly used by paying agencies for monitoring, which makes it as much a compliance reality as an agronomic tool.
Figures are as published at the time of writing. Farm policy and payment rates change frequently — verify against the primary source before relying on any number here.
In the field
Remote sensing, as it actually looks
Photography from working UK holdings alongside the interface that records it. Every frame below is a commissioned slot: the brief is stated until the photograph is taken.
Remote Sensing — a walkthrough
A working pass through remote sensing: entering the record once, and watching it appear in the evidence pack, the calendar and the scheme application without being typed again.
- 0:00 What the module is for
- 0:48 Entering the record
- 2:05 Where it appears next
- 3:20 The evidence pack
Photography slots state their own brief until the shot is commissioned, so the layout never shifts when real images arrive.
In practice
Six things Remote Sensing changes on day one
None of these requires a new process. They all come from recording the work you already do, once, in a form the rest of the platform can use.
Automated satellite imagery ingestion for
Automated satellite imagery ingestion for every registered field.
Vegetation index calculation including NDVI
Vegetation index calculation including NDVI, NDRE and biomass proxies.
Cloud detection and gap filling
Cloud detection and gap filling using radar backscatter.
Time series analysis with within-season
Time series analysis with within-season and between-season comparison.
Anomaly detection flagging fields diverging
Anomaly detection flagging fields diverging from the expected trajectory.
Zoning outputs feeding the variable
Zoning outputs feeding the variable rate prescription builder.
End to end
How Remote Sensing runs, start to finish
The module is modelled as a state machine, so at any point the business knows exactly which stage every record is at and what has to happen next.
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1
Register field boundaries
This is where the record starts, and getting it right here removes work at every later stage.
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2
Ingest imagery automatically on each pass
The platform prompts only for what this stage genuinely needs, and carries everything forward.
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3
Mask cloud and fill with radar
Conflicts with scheme rules, regulatory windows and existing commitments are flagged here rather than discovered later.
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4
Calculate indices and build the time series
Capture works offline, so this stage is completed in the field rather than remembered afterwards.
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5
Detect anomalies against the expected trajectory
Everything recorded at this point becomes evidence automatically, in every format that will later ask for it.
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6
Prioritise scouting and verify on the ground
This is the stage most businesses currently do twice, once for the operation and once for the paperwork.
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7
Feed zoning and prescriptions
Results feed the whole-farm view, so the effect of this stage is visible against the rest of the business.
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8
Archive as evidence
The cycle closes here, and what is learned is carried into next season's plan rather than lost.
How we handle evidence
Where these figures come from
Agrivencia grades every figure it publishes. Primary legislation, official statistics and audit reports are treated as authoritative. Levy body and professional body data is treated as reliable. Commercial trackers and trade press are treated as indicative and labelled as such. Where sources conflict, the conflict is shown rather than resolved silently.
- Authoritative Legislation, statutory instruments, official scheme rules, national audit and public accounts reporting, departmental annual reports and accredited official statistics.
- Reliable Parliamentary committee evidence, peer-reviewed research, independent economic institutes and levy body analysis.
- Supporting Professional bodies, land agents, certification schemes and industry associations.
- Indicative Commercial market trackers and trade press, used for corroboration only and always labelled.
Payment rates, caps and windows in UK farm support change frequently and sometimes without notice. Nothing on this platform is a substitute for the current published scheme rules or for professional advice.
See it working
Book a demonstration on your own holding data
Thirty minutes, using your parcels and your schemes rather than a sample farm, so you can judge it on your own numbers.