Exploring the trend of cover crops in pursuit of sustainable agriculture

Planting cover crops, and reducing tillage, are just a few ways that sustainability can be achieved within agriculture to become more resilient to climate risks. We accurately detect these activities to help support sustainable agriculture.

In February 2021 the USDA reported a 50% increase in the use of cover crops on U.S. cropland between 2012 and 2017. This increase in part came from increased financial and technical assistance from Federal and State conservation programs.

Our cover crop detection across many U.S. states supports a continued increase in the use of cover crops from 2019-2021.

What is sustainable agriculture?

Sustainable agriculture is farming in a suitable way that meets the needs of society’s current food and textile needs without compromising the needs of future generations. It must nurture healthy ecosystems and support the sustainable management of land, water, and natural resources while ensuring world food security. If a farming practice maintains yields while increasing environmental goods and benefits then this can be said to be sustainable agriculture.

How can PlanetWatchers help?

At PlanetWatchers, we have developed our sustainability services to help support the crop insurance and agriculture sector’s shift to more sustainable practices and become more resilient to climate risks. The world population is increasing rapidly and the requirements of the agricultural food industry are dependable on the production of food and how we adapt to the ever-growing population.

PlanetWatchers offer services specifically targeted at monitoring farmer practices, such as cover crop detection and tillage, these are just a few of the ways that can help agriculture become more sustainable.
Using SAR (synthetic aperture radar) led the analysis, we provide verification from county to field level within the hour. We provide accurate near real-time or historical data analysis, to support the crop insurance and agri-food industries address climate change.

Planting cover crops and reducing tillage are just a few ways that sustainability can be achieved within agriculture, to become more resilient to climate risks. By further expanding our sustainability services – we are able to support the Agri-food sector in monitoring these additional farming practices and move to a more sustainable world.

Focusing exclusively on crop insurance in North America, PlanetWatchers tells the story of every field saving our customers time and money by enhancing policy and claims validation.