Agriculture is a significant economic driver in the United States. In 2023, 334 million acres were used to grow crops, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). And those crops were sold for a total of \$267.4 billion, before expenses were deducted. 

The economic impact of agriculture extends far beyond farmers, however, and not only includes a wide variety of agricultural support services, but also encompasses manufacturing industries, services and retail sales of food, clothing, leather, forestry and fishing. This impact added up to a \$1.537 trillion contribution to the U.S. economy in 2023—5.5% of the nation’s entire gross domestic product. 

Tools that make satellite data useful to agricultural businesses are also included. Satellite data can help identify what crops are growing where, when they are planted and harvested, which tillage practices are used, and where cover crops are planted with the intent of benefiting the soil rather than providing a harvest. These insights are used by agricultural researchers, conservation programs and technology companies developing tools to support sustainable farming.

John Shriver is the director of data science at Regrow Ag, a software development company that uses satellite data to help companies in the agriculture business meet their sustainability goals. According to Shriver, companies using Regrow Ag tools have contributed millions of dollars to farmer incentive programs supporting practices like planting cover crops and using reduced-till or no-till methods.

Background photo: A farmer uses a no-till planter to plant soybeans into a cereal rye cover crop that has been killed off recently to avoid interference with the main crop. Photo by Jason Johnson of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Beyond the value of its decades of continuous satellite imagery, Shriver has also found Landsat helpful with commercial satellite imagery. Landsat is a federal partnership in which NASA builds and launches the satellites, and the U.S. Geological Survey operates them and maintains the open-access data archive. Commercial satellites are typically sent into space by private companies that then charge customers for their data.

Landsat satellites provide a variety of spectral bands—visible, near-infrared, shortwave-infrared and thermal—at a lower resolution than many commercial satellites. Shriver leverages this fact when tackling new questions, first exploring them with no-cost Landsat data before developing a new model with paid commercial data. 

Because Landsat satellites undergo rigorous calibration before launch and continually while in orbit, Shriver also uses Landsat to evaluate the accuracy of specific commercial imagery—how well it is calibrated, or how well data from the satellite sensor agrees with corresponding reference plots on the ground. 

“Having something like Landsat, where you can treat it as a gold standard to say, ‘How well do these other data providers fit into the landscape, and how do I use their data, referencing against something I know I can trust?’—that's been very valuable for us,” Shriver said.

And Landsat data has been valuable for farmers. It helps reduce their expenses, such as with strategic irrigation management, and adds to their income and the health of their land through incentives offered by agricultural companies.   

Agriculture is just one example of the many industries that use Landsat data. For all of its direct uses, Landsat’s total annual value was calculated to be \$25.6 billion in 2023. 

Background photo: A cover crop grows in a harvested cornfield near Deerfield, Massachusetts. U.S. Department of Agriculture public domain photo by Lance Cheung.