Precision farming: satellites read crop health, and Agri-PV costs less yield than feared

heise.de covers German and European farm technology in its Landwirtschaft section. The latest piece is about a pair of satellites that map "the vitality and resilience of crops". The satellites watch plants worldwide in the green spectrum and flag climate damage, and the data are open. Judging how a crop is doing is no longer a matter of walking the field. It has become a data layer that can carry decisions about irrigation, fertiliser and when to harvest.

A satellite does not compete with a drone

Precision works at different scales. The same outlet reported in May 2025 on the 2024 season: drones saved at least 22 400 fawns in Germany, plus more than 4 000 young hares, hedgehogs and other animals. Fitted with thermal cameras, the drones find the animals in the grass before the combine passes. It is the same current of technology as the satellites. Surveying a field from the air is cheaper and faster than checking it on foot.

Agri-PV: less loss than expected

On 18 August 2026 heise described research by the University of Hohenheim and the Jülich Research Centre into agrivoltaics, which puts farming and photovoltaic panels on the same area. The conclusion: Agri-PV reduces yields less than previously assumed. That figure matters to farms that have to decide whether to sow a field or shade it. In the same period the outlet reported on the HofDeal app, which connects customers with local farm shops and lets them reserve products in advance. In other words, it shortens the supply chain on the demand side.

Robots in the orchard and the right to repair

On 28 July 2026 researchers tested a harvesting robot for fruit growing near Lake Constance, designed with apple picking in mind. On 10 July of that year heise summed up a legal week: an EU ruling on geoblocking and John Deere's commitment to tractor repairability, alongside Interpol action against fraud networks and work on smaller robots. This is not a curiosity. If a farmer cannot repair a machine himself, the cost of its downtime at the peak of harvest grows fast.

There is also a climate layer. On 1 September 2026 the head of the European Environment Agency called for investment and adaptation, pointing to irreversible changes in Europe. Precision, whether satellite, drone, sensor or robot, is a response to growing variability, not to its absence.

The same direction in China

The Chinese trade weekly 温室园艺 describes the same shift: on Belgian strawberry plantations, autonomous UV-C robots are being deployed at scale, circling greenhouses at night and neutralising fungi with ultraviolet radiation, which allows fungicide use to be cut by as much as 80 percent. During the 32nd International Horticultural Congress IHC2026 in Kyoto (23-28 August 2026), the ISHS Fellow award went to Prof. 杨其长 of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and on 4 September the 33rd edition of the seed trade fair opened in Beijing. The same logic: less chemical, more measurement.